


O Stone, Be Not So!

by Tam_Cranver



Category: The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Bodyswap, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-07 11:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12231774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tam_Cranver/pseuds/Tam_Cranver
Summary: Colleen Wing wakes up one morning to find Luke Cage in her boyfriend's body. And that's just the start of her problems.





	O Stone, Be Not So!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/gifts).



> For the following prompt: "the Defenders go up against some weird magic, and bc of that they get body-swapped for a week or two, tops. how do they and their supporting casts deal with it?"
> 
> Thanks to [enthusiasmgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enthusiasmgirl) for running this fic exchange and to [QueenWithABeeThrone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone) for the prompt. I hope you enjoy the story!

Colleen woke feeling better than she had any right to. Even though Danny had gone out with Luke, Jessica, and Matt the previous night and hadn’t gotten back until after two in the morning, Colleen had still woken up before her alarm went off at six thirty, meaning she was running on something like four hours of sleep. Which was going to be _awesome_ , since Saturday was her busy day, with four separate group karate classes and two private training sessions. 

Still, whether it was the bright fall sunlight warming against the walls as the sun rose, or the fact that she _had_ classes to teach, and she had Danny, and her dojo, and sometimes for as long as a day or two at a time she could pretend to be a normal person, Colleen still felt good. She made herself a smoothie and let herself sip it slowly as she watched the news on her tablet in the kitchen. Nothing bad, nothing about Danny, just delays on the subway and reports on the city’s current hot spots—she had been right, it was going to be a good day. 

Setting her cup in the sink, she went into the dojo, checked the collection of weapons and the shrine against the back wall, and went into a series of stretches, letting her body wake up with the sun. She’d done this particular warm-up so many times over the years, she didn’t even really have to think about it but could let her mind drift over Danny, and the kids in her 8:30 beginners’ class, and what she wanted to have for lunch today. Danny had promised to fill her in on his trek last night to what Matt thought might be another Hand heroin factory, and Colleen was going to hold him to it. Possibly over gyros. Colleen had a taste for Greek. 

When she’d finished her routine, it was already almost 8:00. Danny was going to have to get moving if he wanted to help with her class today. Colleen had firmly banned him from interacting with the students if he hadn’t meditated and warmed up first—it helped get his mind and qi in order. It wasn’t like he’d ever mean to hurt any of them, but he wasn’t used to sparring with people who didn’t know what they were doing, and he had a tendency to let his emotions get away from him. Plus, the beginners’ class was mostly kids. Maybe it was better, Colleen reflected, to just let Danny help her with demonstrations. 

She paused. Maybe it was just better to let him sleep in. He’d had a late night, after all. 

But Danny really liked the kids in her Saturday morning class, and the kids liked him, too. Probably recognized a kindred spirit, Colleen thought wryly. And Colleen sometimes—sometimes—liked having someone else there to bounce ideas off of. Since most of her senior students either hated her for betraying the Hand or thought she was nuts for warning them away from the Hand, Danny was pretty much the only one she could talk shop with during most of her classes. 

Nope. She wasn’t dwelling on the past. Not today. She made her way back up to the bedroom and knelt on the mattress. “Hey, sleepyhead,” she said, gently shaking Danny’s shoulder. “Almost 8. You still want to help with the beginners’ class?” 

Danny groaned and rolled over onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes. 

She poked him. “Hey, last chance, Iron Fist. You know Ayesha and Andre and their mom always show up five minutes early, and you gotta wake up a little if you’re gonna get yourself in the right frame of mind to demonstrate forms with me.” 

He scrunched up his face like a he’d bitten into lemon, and Colleen stood up. “Okay, I give up.” She smiled down at him. He had to be pretty tired, what with the late night he’d had. “Sleep in if you want,” she said. “I gotta get the dojo ready, though. Check in afterwards?” 

He usually mumbled a sleepy agreement and rolled over again, but instead he frowned, opened his eyes, and then pushed himself up onto his elbows and peered at her through narrow, sleep-fuzzy eyes. “Colleen?” he asked, as if he weren’t quite sure. 

He still had nightmares sometimes, still woke disoriented or actively distressed. Colleen kept her voice light as she said, “You have other girls in your bed on a Saturday morning?” 

Danny sat bolt upright in his bed, awake now. He looked in alarm at his hands, felt at his chest like he was checking to see if he was real. Colleen sat back down and quickly drew him into a hug. She didn’t mind; he did it for her often enough. “Hey, shh, it’s okay,” she said. “It was just a dream.” 

“No,” said Danny, pulling away. Colleen sat back, a little hurt. “This isn’t a dream.” He pinched himself, as if to check, and then looked up at her helplessly. “I don’t even know _what_ this is. Colleen?” 

This didn’t sound like the normal post-nightmare routine. “Danny?” 

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” he said seriously, meeting her eyes with a grave expression Colleen didn’t see from him very often. “I’m not Danny.” 

Colleen could feel her eyebrows involuntarily rising. “You’re not Danny,” she repeated. It didn’t sound like a joke, and Danny didn’t look…possessed, or brainwashed, or anything. Colleen tried not to jump to conclusions too quickly these days, but a yawning pit of anxiety opened in the bottom of her stomach. So much for her good day. “Okay,” she said slowly. “So who are you?” 

“Luke,” said Danny. 

“Luke.” She felt like an idiot. “Luke…Cage?” 

He nodded. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I swear to God everything was normal when I went to bed last night. But this morning, I, ah….” He looked at his hands again. Colleen would have laughed at the baffled expression on his face under other circumstances. 

She didn’t laugh. She pulled out her phone and dialed Claire’s number. 

Her Saturday morning students were going to have to take a rain check. 

** 

Claire was good at waking up alert and ready to go—years of long shifts in ERs and ICUs, and then a year or so of helping people with superpowers and psychological issues at any hour of the day or night, were good at training someone to grab their sleep where they could and jump into action where they were needed. 

That didn’t mean she _liked_ getting woken up at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. She reached out from under her nice warm covers and checked the phone. Colleen. She answered it, because Colleen wouldn’t be calling her at this hour unless it was important. If Colleen knew what was good for her. “This better be good,” she said without greetings. Once you’d helped blow up a building with someone, you were pretty much past hellos. 

“Claire,” said Colleen, sounding panicked. “Danny is Luke.” 

Claire blinked. “Say what now?” 

“I don’t know, they—they switched bodies or something. Lemme—” 

There was some shuffling on the other end of the phone, and then it switched to speakerphone and Danny Rand’s voice said, “Claire?” 

“Danny, I don’t know what you guys are up to, but it’s Saturday morning, and—” 

“You told me to trust the fighter in you.” 

She swallowed. It felt like something had been jarred loose in her stomach. “What?” 

“When we found out about what Reva was really doing in Seagate, and I decided I had to go back to Georgia. I wasn’t sure if I could trust you—wasn’t sure _what_ you were, why you kept getting involved—but you told me to trust the fighter in you. And I did, and I haven’t regretted it yet.” 

There was a chance that Luke had told Danny all that, Claire reminded herself. But it wasn’t much of a chance. Luke and Danny got along just fine, but Claire couldn’t see Luke digging up play-by-plays of his most hurt and uncertain moments for Danny. If she was honest, she kind of _hoped_ Luke wasn’t digging up intimate moments of their relationship for Danny. She took a deep breath. “What am I always telling you?” 

“I’m one handsome son of a gun?” said Danny—Luke?—Danny. Claire made a noise like a buzzer, and he laughed. “Nah,” he said. “You tell me a lot of things, but one of them is that apparently I’m really corny.” 

“Shit,” said Claire. She turned to Luke—what she _thought_ was Luke—sprawled out on his back in bed beside her, and dropped her phone on the bed. “If you’re Luke, then….” She reached out to shake Luke’s shoulder. 

Not-Luke groaned, and Claire shook his shoulder again, more urgently this time. “Luke?” she tried. And then, hesitantly, “Danny?” 

What was _wrong_ with her life? 

“Ugh,” said Not-Luke. “Fuck _off_.” 

Well, that _definitely_ wasn’t Luke. “Hey,” said Claire sharply. “I don’t want to be awake right now either, but if you’re in my boyfriend’s body and you’re not my boyfriend, then you can get the hell out of my bed.” 

Not-Luke’s eyes opened, almost immediately widening. “ _Claire_?” He literally jumped out of bed, wrapping the sheet around his hips. “What the _hell_?” 

“My question exactly,” Claire said. “Now, who are you?” 

Not-Luke stared down at his own shirtless body, then shuddered and pulled the sheet up to wrap around his shoulders. “I’m Jessica,” he—she—said, adding “Jessica Jones,” as if Claire was somehow unclear on which Jessica was most likely to be possessing her boyfriend’s body. 

“Uh-huh.” She picked up her phone again. “Yeah, I don’t know if you heard that, but apparently Jessica’s in your body, Luke.” 

“Could be worse,” said Luke phlegmatically, and Jesus, that was weird, because he still sounded like Danny. 

“Wait a second.” There was an edge of panic in Colleen’s voice. “If Jessica’s in Luke’s body, and Luke’s in Danny’s, where’s _Danny_?” 

“Well, the way things are going,” said Luke—no, _Jessica_ —“he’s probably in mine.” Her voice was wry, casual, but there was something horrified in her eyes as she looked at Claire. “Any chance my vodka was spiked last night and I’m just hallucinating all this?” 

That was the thing about this craziness, Claire thought—you couldn’t take too much time for self-pity, because as bad as things seemed to her, they were always worse for the people in the middle of the storm. “Sorry,” she said as kindly as she could. “Doesn’t look that way.” To Luke and Colleen, she said, “Hey, I’m gonna hang up and try dialing Jessica’s number, see if Danny answers.” 

“Call me back as soon as you get in touch with him,” Colleen said instantly. “I’ll try dialing Matt.” 

In the corner of the room, Jessica was reaching a hand out of her sheet-turned-cloak to grab clothes out of the hamper with a frantic urgency. Claire sighed. “All right,” she said. “Talk to you soon.” 

Whoever was on the other end of Jessica’s phone, they didn’t pick up the first time around, and the voicemail got it. That…wasn’t good. Claire tried again, holding the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she pulled some pants on. This time, someone who sounded like Jessica picked up on the third ring. “Um, Claire?” 

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “Who am I talking to?” 

“It’s Matt. Um. Sorry, I know that sounds really strange—” 

“Matt, ‘really strange’ doesn’t even begin to describe my morning. Luke’s in Danny’s body, Jessica’s in Luke’s, and I’m guessing based on process of elimination that that means Danny’s in your body.” 

“Ah,” said Matt shortly. “I should probably get over to my place, then.” 

Claire imagined what it would be like to wake up in another body. Then she imagined what it would be like to wake up in the body of a blind man who could hear blood circulating in people’s veins and smell deodorant from a block away. “Shit,” she said. “Yeah. Yeah, we should all head over to your place.” 

“Is that Murdock?” Jessica demanded. “Let me talk to him.” 

“It’s Jessica,” said Claire before handing the phone over. 

“Murdock!” Jessica snapped. “Don’t you _dare_ touch anything. You keep your hands and eyes off my tits, or I’ll rip your arms off, and you don’t even want to _know_ what I’ll do if I find out you touched me below the belt.” Matt must have said something on the other end, because she said, “Fucking _lawyers_. Fine, if you have to go to the bathroom, you can wipe.” She held the phone back out to Claire. “He wants to talk to you.” 

Claire, who’d been putting on her shoes, finished tying her right sneaker and grabbed the phone back. “Yeah?” 

“Claire, would you mind….” It was weird sounding Jessica’s voice that hesitant, but knowing it was Matt on the other end explained a lot. 

“Would I mind what?” 

There was a long silence on the other end, and finally Matt said, “No, it’s nothing.” 

“ _Matt_ ,” Claire snapped, exasperated, “you literally _switched bodies_ with someone. This Freaky Friday shit may _actually_ be the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, and you _know_ that that’s saying a lot. And now if you get hurt, it’s not _you_ getting hurt, it’s Jessica. What’s wrong?” 

Matt sighed. “Nothing’s _wrong_ , per se. It’s…Do you think, before you go by my place, you could come by Jessica’s? I’m kind of, um. I don’t want to denigrate the power of sight, or seem ungrateful for the opportunity, but I feel like I’m hallucinating. I keep running into things, and as much as I hate to admit this, I’m not entirely sure I can make it back to my apartment by myself. Assuming Jessica wouldn’t kill me if I took money out of her wallet for a cab, I can probably _guess_ what a wallet looks like, but—” 

She hadn’t even thought of that. Matt used a complicated system of sound and smell and, like, sensing air flow to get around, and even if everything about it seemed weird to Claire, well, having all that taken away and replaced with eyesight after twenty years was probably pretty damn disorienting. “Yeah, of course,” she said. “Lemme call Colleen back. Jessica and I’ll be there in…shit, I don’t know, I’ll call you when we’re ten minutes out.” 

“Thanks, Claire.” 

Jessica, now dressed in a worn-out Miami Heat tee-shirt Luke wore for working out, frowned, wrapping her arms around herself as if she were cold and then awkwardly pulling them back to her sides. “What’s the story?” 

“Going by your place to pick Matt up,” Claire said shortly, dialing Colleen again. 

After the first ring, Colleen picked up almost immediately. “Claire! Did you find him? Nobody’s picking up on Matt’s end.” 

Claire hesitated, not wanting to increase Colleen’s panic. “Yeah, um, Matt’s in Jessica’s body, so we’re all assuming that means Danny’s in Matt’s. Jessica and I are going to go pick Matt up, and we’ll meet at his place. You know the address?” 

Colleen gulped on the other end, audibly pulling herself together. “Yeah. Yeah, we go over there sometimes to talk shop and meditate.” 

Now there was a mental image. Then again, Claire thought, Matt actually had a lot in common with Danny and Colleen, so maybe they were all getting something out of it. “Okay, good,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “We’ll see you there soon. Can you put Luke on?” 

After a moment, Danny’s voice said, “Claire?” 

“So, it looks like all four of you ended up in each other’s bodies. And if you think we’re not gonna talk about how you got there, you’ve got another think coming.” 

“Oh, no, ma’am,” said Luke in a dry tone Claire had never heard in Danny’s voice. “I’m pretty eager to talk about how we got here myself.” 

Right. Right. Middle of the storm. She made herself take a deep breath and ask, “You doing okay, babe?” 

“Well. Things are a little weird right now.” He let out a gusty sigh. “Yeah, fine, I guess. No sense in freaking out about it.” 

_Yeah, Claire,_ she told herself. _No sense in freaking out about it._ Not that that actually made her feel better about it. But Luke seemed to be handling it okay, so far, and if he didn’t lose it, then she didn’t really have any right to. “All right. Well, I’ll see you soon.” 

The subway ride to Jessica’s place was…awkward. Claire tried making small talk with Jessica a few times, but Jessica more or less answered in one-word sentences and went back to staring out the window, and Claire couldn’t say she was entirely unhappy about it. It was…weird, seeing her boyfriend’s face and knowing that inside was someone different. She’d dealt with some strange shit since she’d pulled Matt out of the dumpster all those months ago—ninjas, and human experimentation, and orders of mysterious monks and cults and blind men who raised children to fight in wars most people didn’t even know were happening. But this was something new. 

Claire was really starting to hate new. Why couldn’t things just stay normal and boring for a while? 

When they reached Jessica’s building, Jessica stomped straight for the building and started banging on the door as if they were the only people in the building. “Murdock! Open up!” 

“Hey,” Claire said sharply but quietly. “Let’s try not to wake the whole building here, huh?” 

“Eh.” Jessica dismissed this with an irritated shrug. “They’re used to it at this point.” 

Someone fumbled with the chain and lock on the other side of the door for a few moments, and then Jessica, or rather, Matt opened the door. From looking at him, Claire guessed that Jessica had gone to bed in her clothes last night and Matt, who liked to look sharp but hadn’t seen himself in a mirror in twenty years, had absolutely no idea what to do to make that happen in Jessica’s body. He didn’t look like he was too concerned about that right now, anyway. He was staring with wide eyes at Claire and Jessica, a polite and completely un-Jessica-like smile fixed on his face. 

“Hi,” he said. 

Claire rolled her eyes. “Hi, Matt.” 

At that, he leaned forward and tilted his head at her. “Claire?” 

He was unabashedly staring at her, and though Claire _knew_ why, she still couldn’t help feeling a little weird under his gaze and looked away. “Yep. This is what I look like.” 

“Huh,” said Matt, sounding absolutely fascinated. “Wow, yeah, that’s you.” He turned his attention to Jessica. “And, uh. Jessica?” 

“Yeah, but I’m in Luke’s body right now,” said Jessica. “Because apparently that’s a thing. Go grab my shoes—they’re by my bed—and I’ll get my wallet. Iron Chef isn’t picking up at your place.” 

That seemed to snap Matt out of his daze. “Right,” he said. “Absolutely, we’d better get over there.” 

It took a little longer than they would have liked to get Matt out the door—first, because he couldn’t walk in Jessica’s favorite boots, and she had to dig a pair of beat-up sneakers out of her closet for him, and second, because he was really bad at gauging how far things were away from him and kept tripping over things. 

“You know, I knew, theoretically, how depth perception worked,” said Matt, who was blinking first one eye and then another at his shoes as he struggled to tie them. “In practice, though, it doesn’t really seem to be translating into a workable idea of distance.” He held up a finger and frowned at it. 

“Jesus, is that what you’ve been doing all morning?” Jessica asked impatiently. “Blinking at my finger?” 

He raised an eyebrow at her. “It’s a pretty entertaining finger.” 

“Here’s a finger for you.” Jessica flipped him the bird, and he laughed, the kind of goofy, unreserved laugh that Claire had rarely seen from him but never seen from Jessica. 

Claire half-regretted disturbing their weird little moment of happiness, but Colleen was probably out of her mind with worry at this point, and God only knew what Danny was doing, suddenly blinded and faced with more sensory information than any normal person ever had to deal with. “Guys,” she said, and Matt, sobering, nodded. 

“Right, sorry.” He closed his eyes and tied the shoes, and Claire shook her head and tried not to be surprised at the difference between how surely his hands moved with his eyes closed and his confusion when they were open. 

Jessica, who had gone back into the bedroom, came back out with a pair of battered sunglasses, which she handed to Matt. 

“Thanks,” he said, sounding surprised. 

“No problem,” said Jessica gruffly. “Grab my arm when we leave, it’ll just look like we’re dating and can’t keep our hands off each other.” 

Claire wasn’t actually sure _what_ it looked like as they made their way the few blocks over to Matt’s place. As always, she thought tiredly, people would probably come up with some explanation that was a lot more boring but a lot less stressful than the actual truth. She missed the days when she was the person coming up with those rationalizations. 

Then again, she thought, maybe not. If this was the world they lived in now, better to know than not to know. Better to be in the thick of things trying to help than to hide her head in the sand and pretend it wasn’t happening. 

But Jesus, _body swapping_? Really? 

** 

Colleen and Luke had made it over to Matt’s place quickly enough, but as it turned out, they might as well have taken their time. The door was locked, with no key under the mat, and nobody came to answer when they knocked at the door. 

“Danny?” Colleen asked, knocking again. Nothing. Surely he wouldn’t have gone anywhere when he woke up and found himself in Matt’s body, would he? Or would he even know that he was in Matt’s body? If Colleen woke up unable to see in a strange place, she’d probably think she’d been kidnapped. “Danny, it’s Colleen,” she tried again, and when there was no response, she laid an ear against the door. There wasn’t much to hear, but she thought she could make out a faint whimpering, and her blood ran cold. 

“Luke,” she said urgently. “Can you knock the door down?” 

“Why, what’s up?” asked Luke, looking alarmed. 

“Just, can you?” 

“I don’t make a habit of just breaking through people’s doors,” said Luke. “Well. Not if they’re not doing anything wrong.”

“I think I heard Danny crying in there,” said Colleen, knowing her voice was getting louder but not caring too much, and Luke’s dubious expression hardened into firmness.

“All right,” he said. He first aimed a kick at it, but he seemed off balance, and the door shook a little without giving in. Next, he placed a shoulder against the door and pushed, then again, then pulled back, rubbing his shoulder. “Ouch. Not used to that hurting so much. No offense to Danny, but I just can’t get enough force to make it budge.”

“Can you summon the Iron Fist?” It was a long shot, but worth a try. 

He looked at her like she was crazy. “Can I what now?” 

“You’re in Danny’s body!” She gestured at him. “Maybe there’s a kind of muscle memory.” 

“Pretty sure he doesn’t do that with muscles,” Luke said, but he closed his eyes. “Okay, he always talks about summoning his qi. How’s that work?” 

Honestly, Colleen didn’t know. Her own meditation practice helped her get into the right frame of mind to fight without overthinking her moves, and it sometimes helped her find a little emotional equilibrium, but it didn’t help her to heal others’ illnesses or punch hard enough to send people she hadn’t even touched flying. What Danny did wasn’t typical—even by K’un Lun standards. There was, after all, only one Iron Fist at any given time. “I’m not sure. You know that light that happens when he summons it?” 

“The glowy fist thing?” asked Luke. 

She stifled the urge to correct him. “Yeah. Can you picture that light as a force inside you, flowing around the way blood does?” 

Luke closed his eyes. “I’m trying.” 

“Take a few deep breaths,” Colleen urged. He nodded and breathed in deeply through his nose, letting it out slowly. 

After a few moments, though, he sighed and opened his eyes again. “I don’t know, Colleen. I’m not feeling anything…different, or mystical, or anything.” 

“Shit.” She ran to the door and tugged on the knob. “Danny?” she called. “It’s Colleen. Just—just hold on a sec.” 

“Wow," said…Luke, except it wasn’t Luke. It was Matt, or Jessica, or somebody, Colleen couldn’t remember. Colleen turned around. Whoever was in Luke’s body was on the landing, and he or she gave her an arch look. “What, you can’t fist it open?”

“Danny’s in there,” Colleen said shortly. “I heard him, it sounds like he’s hurt, and we can’t get in.” Claire and whoever was in Jessica’s body made their way up the stairs a little more slowly. One of them had to be Matt. “Matt, do you have a key?”

Jessica-but-probably-Matt shook his head, looking concerned. “Not on me,” he said. “It’s in my pocket, but my pocket’s inside."

“Seriously?” Not-Luke—it must have been Jessica, Matt didn’t really sound like that—pounded on the door. “Hey! Rand! Open up!”

Matt winced. “Is there any chance you could pick the lock, Jessica?”

Jessica made a face at him. “What do you take me for?” 

“Is that a yes?” 

“Hey,” said Colleen, not in the mood for their banter. “Danny could be hurt. Can one of you get us in?” 

Without answering, Jessica lifted a foot and kicked in the door. To Matt, she said, “We can replace the door. I know a guy.” 

Colleen ignored them and rushed into the apartment. It seemed empty, at first, but a noise made Colleen turn and run into the bedroom. 

There, curled up on the bed, was what looked like Matt, but Colleen had never seen Matt look this bad, even when he was in the hospital after they’d discovered he wasn’t really dead. This Matt was curled up in a ball on the bed, his hands pressed so tightly over his ears his fingertips were turning white. His face was red and covered in tears, and Colleen could smell vomit from the other side of the bed. 

“Danny?” she tried softly. 

The figure on the bed reared up. “Colleen! God, what is _happening_?” 

Colleen sat on the bed next to him and tried to pull him into a hug, but he cringed away from her and she blinked, hurt. “Um, you’re in Matt’s body. Can you tell me what’s wrong?” She turned to find Matt. “Are you…injured, or something?” 

“Nope,” said Matt flatly. He went to the bedside table and pulled out a set of headphones, which he carefully placed over Danny’s ears. The reaction from Danny was instantaneous; he blinked and straightened up a little. Matt smiled. “Danny,” he said, “can you hear my heartbeat?” 

“What?” said Danny. “Jessica?” 

“My heartbeat. Can you hear it?” Her voice—no, _his_ , Matt’s voice, but it sounded like Jessica’s voice—was calm and level, and Colleen wondered where the hell he was getting that calm from. 

Danny frowned. “Yeah?” 

“Okay. Focus on that. All the other sounds you’re hearing? Take them in and let them go. Just focus on my heartbeat. What do I smell like?” 

Apparently taken off-guard by the question, Danny blinked and sat up more. “Gin,” he said. “Beer.” 

“Oh, come _on_ ,” said Jessica, from where she, Luke, and Claire were standing in the doorway. 

Matt’s mouth quirked in a little half-smile that Colleen had seen from him before, though it looked a little weird on Jessica’s face. “Okay,” he said. “What else?” 

“Soap,” said Danny. “Dust. Coffee. Pizza. I don’t…there’s a lot more, but I don’t know how to describe it.” 

“That’s okay. Do you feel any better?” 

Danny’s eyebrows crumpled together and he moved his mouth around like he was eating something he didn’t like. “A little, I guess. Not really. My mouth tastes terrible, everything hurts, and—it’s like—I don’t know, like everybody in New York is shouting at me.” 

“You should probably be used to that one,” Jessica put in, and Luke (who, God, looked just like Danny) elbowed her in the side. 

“Come on,” he said in a low voice. 

Matt fiddled with his fingers for a moment, and then said, “Let me get you something to make the taste a little better.” 

Without responding to this, or asking what Matt would bring, Danny said, “What happened? Like, is this a side-effect of coming back from the dead? Like a Hand thing?”

Matt’s back stiffened. “No. Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that.” Before anyone could ask him what it _was_ like, he’d awkwardly maneuvered around Jessica, Claire, and Luke and left the room.

“So, wait,” asked Danny in the silence left behind. “Why am I in Matt’s body again?”

”That is the question, isn’t it?” Claire’s face was unamused. “Who wants to tell me what you guys did last night?” 

Jessica huffed and rolled her eyes, but she seemed less irritated at Claire than exhausted at the world at large. “Nothing! We followed some guy into a warehouse, he vanished, everyone went home. The whole thing was a waste of time. And now… _this_.” She gestured toward herself, to Luke’s body. 

“Danny?” asked Colleen. She wanted to reach for his hand, but she was afraid he’d pull away again. 

“Hmm?” he said, sounding distracted. 

“Can you think of anything that happened last night that would have caused this?” 

“I don’t really understand what _this_ is,” Danny said. “I mean, I thought I’d been captured by the Hand or someone. But I guess I’m Matt, and he’s Jessica, and….” 

“Yeah,” Luke said. “I’m you, by the way.” 

Danny considered that. “Huh,” he said. “You’d probably be a good Iron Fist.” 

“Yeah, I’m not really interested in being any kind of Iron Fist,” Luke said wryly. Colleen felt herself bristle. She fucking _dared_ him to make fun of Danny when he was freaking out and miserable. As if Luke picked up on this, he gave her a quick smile and said, “Thanks, though.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. The whole thing doesn’t even seem real.” 

Matt reappeared, carrying a glass of water and a sleeve of saltine crackers. He came close to the bed again. “Hold out your hands, Danny.” When Danny obeyed, he held the crackers against one hand until Danny took them, and then wrapped Danny’s other hand around the glass of water. “Water and lemon and saltine crackers. Breakfast of champions.” 

“Ugh,” Danny groaned. “I can’t even think about food now.” 

“I know,” said Matt matter-of-factly, “but it actually does help to get something in your stomach.” 

With a grimace, Danny sipped on the water. As Colleen watched, his frowned lightened, his face relaxing. “Huh,” he said. “This actually tastes pretty good.” 

“Two drops lemon juice to one gallon filtered water,” said Matt. “Tried and true.” 

“Yeah, okay, Betty Crocker,” Jessica broke in, “if we’re done exchanging cooking tips, you think we could get back to the part where we _switched bodies_?” 

Luke sighed. “Okay. Maybe—maybe we can narrow down a time. Now, I was myself when I went to bed last night. That the case for all of you?” 

“Yeah,” Matt said, straightening up. “That would have been…maybe a little after two-thirty.” 

Jessica screwed up her face. It looked genuinely odd on Luke’s features. “I went to bed straight after I got home. I don’t know what time that was, but I was definitely me. Iron Ninja?” Danny ignored this, and Jessica looked like she was going to reach out and poke him but ultimately decided against it. “ _Rand._ ” 

Apparently Danny hadn’t been ignoring her on purpose. He blinked, surprised, and said, “Uh, I changed my clothes after I went home and went to bed, like, two-fifteen. Matt, I’m hearing people fighting about…getting into medical school? I think? And it sounds like it’s happening in the room with us. Is that normal?” 

Matt sighed. “Mr. and Mrs. Mauer’s daughter is home from college for fall break. They’re a very…high-achieving family. Try to ignore it unless it sounds like someone’s in clear and present danger.” 

“Easier said than done,” Danny muttered, and Colleen looked curiously at Matt. She’d always been curious about how Matt managed to fight sighted opponents as easily as he did, but she’d felt awkward about asking. It seemed now that the answer involved a lot of disciplined sorting through and filtering out information. Surely Danny could manage that until they figured out how to switch them back—Danny could be reckless at times, but when he had to be, he could be more disciplined than anyone else Colleen had ever known 

“Okay,” said Claire, breaking through Colleen’s musings. She’d clasped her hands together against her chest and was resting her chin on them, looking lost in thought. “Everyone was themselves when they went to bed, which means this happened when you were asleep. I don’t—obviously nobody snuck into the house and performed _brain surgery_ last night, and if they did, it sure as hell wouldn’t look like this. This doesn’t make any sense. What the hell even got moved around?” 

That was a good point. Wasn’t just about everything that made a person a person in the brain? How could you have someone else’s brain and be a different person? “Hypnosis?” Colleen offered tentatively. “Maybe you’re actually in your own bodies, you just got hypnotized to _think_ you’re in the wrong bodies?” 

Jessica made a rude noise. “Yeah, sure. Luke just got _hypnotized_ into forgetting everything about himself that I personally don’t know, because some weirdo hypnotist would totally be able to do that, and then they gave him memories that I’ve literally never told anyone else.” 

“I don’t know,” said Claire, “it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. At least it’s a rational explanation. Kind of.” 

“That’s not what happened,” Luke said flatly. 

“I agree,” said Matt. “Jessica’s right, too. Somebody who devoted a lot of time and effort to spying on us could probably fill in a lot of broad outlines if they were trying to make a person think they were one of us, but I can tell you right now there were no cameras or microphones hidden inside this apartment, and Jessica’s never spent a lot of time here, so if I'm Jessica, how do I know where to find the glasses, or the first aid kit under the bed, or the trunk where I keep my Daredevil gear?” Colleen shot a quick look under the bed, but felt weird about actually getting under there to look. Claire apparently didn’t feel so shy, and she reached under and pulled out a first aid kit. 

“Yeah, okay,” she said, sounding tired. “Body-switching it is.” 

Matt smiled apologetically. “Would this be a bad moment to bring up the concept of the immortal soul?” 

Jessica made a rude noise. Luke frowned at her. “Hey, I’m not getting into religion here either, but it’s not like we haven’t encountered some…mystical, metaphysical _whatever_. You got a scientific explanation for how people can come back from the dead, or Danny fighting a dragon?” 

Colleen looked to Danny, who genuinely _did_ have explanations for how he’d become the Iron Fist, and would generally give them at the drop of a hat if it came up in conversation, but he seemed to be spacing out again. She gently nudged him with an elbow, but apparently not gently enough, because he jumped, and winced, and crumbled the saltine cracker he’d been holding into crumbs as his hand clenched into a fist. 

“Sorry,” she said. “Are you okay?” 

He reached for her hand and patted it awkwardly. “Sure,” he said. “I just didn’t know how loud my own _heartbeat_ was. I was trying to figure out if someone was coming closer, but everything’s so loud, I can’t really tell if what I’m hearing is, like, people’s heartbeats, or if it’s footsteps.” 

Before Colleen could figure out a good answer to this, a door opened, and a loud, jovial, vaguely familiar voice said, “Yo, Matt! Get your ass out of bed, let’s get brunch or something!” 

Danny winced at the noise; Matt perked up, starting to smile; Luke looked mildly alarmed. 

Jessica looked at the door. “Guess it was footsteps.” 

** 

_Shit_ , thought Claire, and she darted out of the room before anyone else could. Nelson—Foggy—was a reasonable enough guy. If she could get there before he freaked out— 

He blinked at her, surprised. “Hey, Claire,” he said. “Didn’t expect you here.” Something seemed to occur to him, and he frowned. “Are you and Matt….” 

There were a number of questions he could have been trying to ask, and the answer to all of them would have been ‘no,’ but there was always the off-chance that it would get him out of there faster if she played like she had something a lot nicer to hide about her reasons for being here than she actually did. Then again, Claire wasn’t a particularly good liar. 

Before she had to decide what to say, though, Jessica stalked out of the bathroom and gave Foggy Nelson a narrow-eyed glare. “What the hell, Nelson?” she asked. “You just barge in here without even knocking?” 

Foggy looked taken aback, and Claire couldn’t blame him—he’d probably never seen Luke more than mildly annoyed, much less Jessica Jones levels of pissy. “Mr. Cage,” he said. “I. Uh.” His mouth firmed. “Matt,” he shouted. 

Colleen and Matt appeared at the door, Colleen looking irritated and Matt gazing at Foggy with dazed delight. “Foggy,” Matt said, and Foggy gave him a baffled look. 

“Hey,” said Colleen, “could you keep it down?” 

“Yeah, hi, Ms. Wing. I have to talk to my pa—my friend in there, who _told me he wasn’t doing this crimefighting stuff!_ ” This last was clearly pitched so it could be heard in the bedroom—not that it would have mattered if Danny had actually been Matt, since Matt in his own body could probably have heard Nelson from a block away. 

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to help them,” said Matt. He was still staring at Foggy like he was trying to memorize every detail of his face. “I said I was going to take it easy on the fighting while I get back into shape, which I have been. There are a lot of situations where having heightened senses is valuable in information-gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance, that kind of thing.” 

“Umm….” Foggy’s expression was going from bewildered to irritated. “Not to be rude, but I wasn’t talking to you, Ms. Jones.” 

Jessica rolled her eyes. “You don’t say.” 

Clearly the idea of getting him out without explaining the situation was a bust. “That’s Matt, by the way. Who looks like Jessica. The two of them and Luke and Danny Rand switched bodies last night. I know that sounds insane, so I’m just getting it out there.” Claire wondered when this had become her life. 

Foggy raised an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.” He craned his neck to peer into the bedroom, where Danny had tentatively gotten himself out of bed and was shuffling around with his hands held out in front of him. “What the hell did you get yourself into this time, Matt?” he asked Danny. “Did you hit your head again?” 

Danny ignored this, and Claire bit down on her irritation at being so casually dismissed. Matt sighed. “I know it sounds crazy, Foggy,” he said. “But it’s true. Somehow we’ve all ended up—switching bodies, or metamorphosing into each other, or something. We’re still trying to work out the hows and whys, but we narrowed down the when to between 2:30 last night and maybe 7:00 this morning.” 

“If this is some kind of joke,” said Foggy crossly, looking from one of them to another, “it’s not a very funny one, and I don’t appreciate being treated like an idiot.” 

Jessica threw her arms out wide in a frustrated gesture. “I got a great solution to that one, Nelson—maybe don’t _be_ an idiot. You think we don’t know this is batshit? You really think the rest of us don’t have anything better to do on a Saturday morning than hang around Murdock’s place and help him prank you?” 

She was getting a little loud, and Claire was grateful when Luke took a step closer to her and said, “Hey, Jess, take it down a notch. This isn’t the kind of thing we want Matt’s neighbors calling the police about.” To Foggy, he said, “Nobody’s treating anybody like an idiot. Everybody here’s just trying to figure out what’s going on.” 

“Oh, _come on_ ,” said Foggy, losing a little of his angry certainty. “Switched bodies? Really? What is this, like, _Face/Off_?” 

Matt took a step closer to him, smiling softly. “They didn’t switch bodies in _Face/Off_ , I don’t think,” he said. “Just faces. Hence the title. Foggy, have I told you lately how much it means to me when you keep an open mind and hear me out, even when the situation seems strange and improbable? It makes it so much easier to be open with you if I know I’m not going to get called crazy or a liar for sharing what’s going on in my life, and—not to be condescending, honestly—it makes me really proud of you.” Claire was impressed—that little speech seemed like it should have been sarcastic, but Matt sounded perfectly sincere. 

Foggy’s jaw dropped, and he stared hard for a few moments at Matt, who never lost his soft, hopeful expression. Then he swallowed, let his shoulders sag, and let out a long, loud breath through his teeth. “Yep,” he said. “That’s Matt. Fuck.” He swallowed again. “I need a drink.” 

“Amen!” said Jessica. “Matt, where do you keep the booze?” 

“What do you want?” asked Matt. “I have…well, a couple bottles of this wheat beer I’ve been trying out, some scotch…I think I have some vodka in the freezer?” 

“Vodka,” said Jessica instantly, and Foggy nodded. 

“I second that emotion. If you have any orange juice, I’ll take a screwdriver.” 

Matt cocked his head and gave Foggy a vaguely concerned look, but said, “Sure. One screwdriver and one vodka on the rocks, coming up.” On his way to the kitchen, he gave Foggy another pleased smile. “It’s really good to see you, by the way. Though you probably should start calling before you come by.” 

Danny was still stumbling around Matt’s bedroom, Colleen hovering nervously by his side. Claire sighed. Matt’s senses worked for him, but it was clear they weren’t helping Danny get around. “Hey,” she said to them, “now that we’ve got that taken care of, you guys want to come out and sit in the living room or something?” 

Colleen shot Danny a concerned look and said, “There’s still puke on Matt’s floor.” 

Puke was the least of their problems at this point. “I’ll let him know.” 

“It’s my fault,” said Danny miserably. “I should clean it up.” 

Against her will, Claire could feel herself softening. “Danny. Don’t worry about it. Nobody blames you for throwing up. Now why don’t you come on out and we can figure out what’s going on, huh?” 

In the living room, Foggy and Jessica were on the couch downing their drinks with somewhat troubling rapidity, and Matt was sniffing the vodka with a curious look on his face. Luke just looked awkward, like he wasn’t sure where to stand or what to do with his hands. Claire cleared her throat. 

“Hey,” she said. “How about we all sit down and go through your night, in _detail_ , so we can find out what the hell happened to you four?” 

Matt looked up and set the bottle of vodka down. “Sure. Can I get any of you anything to eat or drink?” 

Claire was getting a little bit of a headache. “Put a pot of coffee on?” 

“You got it,” said Matt. 

While he filled the coffeepot, the rest of them settled in his living room. He didn’t have any chairs in there, just the couch, and Colleen, who’d carefully guided Danny from the bedroom, settled herself and Danny down on the corner of the rug. Claire looked around, trying to figure out where to sit. 

Foggy, apparently distracted from his drink by the movement, scooted over to make room on the couch, and Luke gestured toward it. Feeling unbelievably awkward, Claire settled down between Foggy and Jessica. She’d sat next to Luke on a couch dozens of times, just usually not while Jessica was in his body, and sitting next to her while she awkwardly held herself separate from Claire was just…weird. 

But then, everything about this was weird. She leaned back into the beat-up couch to make herself as comfortable as she could and said, “Okay. So, the four of you went out last night. What were you doing?” 

“What, Luke didn’t tell you?” asked Colleen with a frown. 

Luke’s superheroing was still a topic they were learning to talk about. He seemed to think sometimes that because _he_ couldn’t stay out of whatever weird criminal or supernatural shit was going down, that meant he had to work all the harder to keep _her_ out of it, and sometimes she let him, just for the sake of pretending life was normal for a while. She was in the planning stages of setting up a health clinic for low-income Harlem residents, and it was honestly enough to keep her busy without all the superhero shit. That didn’t mean she _shouldn’t_ press him on what he was doing more, though, so she narrowed her eyes at him and said, “He was vague about it.” 

Luke had the good grace to look sheepish. “We were tracking some drug mules. Matt’s run into them before—they worked for Madame Gao back in the day. They vanished for a while, but I guess they’re back now.” 

Foggy craned his head around to look at Matt, who was messing with the coffee machine. “You didn’t tell me that!” 

“Which part?” asked Matt. “They ran heroin, it didn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d want to talk about.” He scratched at his chin. “It was…it was a very weird set-up.” 

“Weird how?” asked Claire. This was news to her, too. 

He shrugged uncomfortably, still facing away from the living room as he got mugs out of his cupboards. “Like a cross between a sweatshop and a cult. They were all blind. Not—not congenitally. They’d all blinded themselves. Gao said it was…it was because they had faith in…I can’t remember what she said, exactly. That they had faith that they’d see something beyond the everyday world. Something like that.” 

“Sounds like something that asshole Stick would say,” Jessica said, and then looked like she regretted it immediately. 

Matt frowned, but he didn’t seem angry, just thoughtful. “Honestly, it does. I don’t know what exactly it is they were trying to see. Whatever it was, they all seemed to disappear after that night I found their workshop. Like they’d evaporated into thin air. The whole thing felt like a bad dream. I poked around a little, but I never found any traces of them.” 

Foggy opened his mouth like he was going to say something, closed it, and frowned. A moment later, he tried again. “Okay, they shut down after you found them. So what changed?” 

“What changed is they started recruiting again.” Luke’s mouth turned down sourly. “You’d think the Hand would have learned its lesson about taking kids from Harlem last time, after we took out their Fingers or whatever, but apparently not.” 

“Not just Harlem, either,” Colleen put in. “I’m friends with a woman named Jenny who runs a shelter for runaway and homeless teenagers—a lot of my students back in the day were recommendations from her.” She looked down for a moment, looking guilty, but before Claire could get too worried, she looked up again. “The last time I talked to her, she was really upset. A couple of pretty vulnerable kids had gone missing. Then two weeks ago, there was a break-in at Rand.” 

Danny, who’d been sitting cross-legged on the corner of the rug and scowling to himself, looked up. “Yeah, Ward said they were stealing stuff from the file room. We gave most of the stuff from the Hand’s fake heroin operation to the police, but there was still a bunch of, I don’t know, financial stuff Ward didn’t want to hand over, so it was in the archives room. But then we got these kids on camera taking stuff.” 

The sound of something shattering made Claire jump, and everyone looked to the kitchen. Matt was standing still, staring at the floor and looking confused. “I was just….” He started. “I was trying to grab two mugs at once, and one just…broke in my hand.” 

Jessica sighed. “Yeah, that’s a thing about being super strong. Gotta be careful how hard you hold onto things.” 

“Huh.” He looked at his hands and made a face. “Yeah, I guess so.” 

Foggy stood up. “Stand still, man,” he said. “I’ll get the broom.” 

It took a few minutes for Matt, Foggy, and Claire to get the broken ceramic and coffee cleaned up. Colleen, Claire, and Foggy grabbed their own coffees in the kitchen; Jessica poured herself another vodka on the rocks while Luke eyed her with a grave expression and poured himself a glass of orange juice. Matt got another lemon and water for Danny, and then one for himself, and they all drifted back to the living room with their drinks. 

Claire had taken advantage of the disruption to process what she’d heard so far. It seemed clear that the Hand was active again in some form, and was preying on vulnerable kids to do it. But what was the goal? And who was in charge? Or was it a kind of power vacuum, some other crazy group coming in to pick up where the Hand had left off? “Okay,” she said once everyone had settled back in. “So how do we get from there to you guys switching bodies?” 

“Isn’t _that_ the million-dollar question?” Jessica took a swig of her drink. “So the story is, some of these missing kids start showing up on camera in Rand Industries, and some of them start wearing sunglasses and carrying canes and dropping off packages full of cash and heroin around town.” 

“How do you know that?” asked Foggy, and Matt shrugged. 

“Friends in low places.” 

Claire tried to work through this mentally. “And the blind drug runners were associated with Gao before, and you wanted to see if she was back.” 

Luke nodded. “Right. Nobody ever actually saw her body, and if she’s the one talking people into _blinding_ themselves…well, it could explain what’s going on with some of these kids.” 

If anyone could have talked themselves out of a collapsing building, thought Claire, it would have been that manipulative witch. “So you followed one of them.” 

“Yeah,” said Jessica. “Did a little digging, and it turns out they’ve been giving a lot of cash bribes to one of the companies cleaning up the Midland Circle site. I actually went over there to get something out of the construction guys, but this big blind guy just happened to drop off a mysterious package while I was watching the place. Lucky me.” She snorted. “Anyway, followed the guy back to an address at 151st and Amsterdam, which _just happened_ to be the place where the Hand killed a bunch of guys that one time. Gotta love a coincidence, right?” 

“Wait,” Foggy asked, “when did they kill a bunch of guys?” 

“They’re pretty much always killing a bunch of guys,” said Matt, sounding tired. “But this particular time was around the time of the earthquake. According to Stick, their victims were the last remaining members of the Chaste, but who the hell knows if that was true.” 

“The Chaste?” Foggy looked lost, and Claire couldn’t blame him. The whole thing was insane. 

“The Iron Fist’s army,” Danny supplied helpfully, and Matt rolled his eyes. 

“I don’t know if you can really call them your army when you didn’t even know they existed.” To Foggy, he said, “I don’t know, they’re some other secret international semi-mystical ninja organization. Apparently the world’s just full of them. This was the army Stick was trying to recruit Elektra and me for when we were kids.” 

“The army—the—Stick—” Foggy broke off and put a hand over his mouth, rubbing at his face. Finally, he said, “Well, that’s fucked up.” 

“It’s what they do,” said Colleen harshly. “The Hand, the Chaste, all of them. They prey on kids who don’t have anyone else to turn to so they can manipulate them into…to giving up their lives for some bullshit cause, and if you even _question_ them, they just pull out the rug from under you.” 

“Colleen,” said Claire, concerned, and Danny reached out, felt around for her hand, and grasped it. 

“We have each other, though, right?” he asked. “You and me. All of us.” 

“Yeah, yeah, we’re all one big happy family,” said Jessica, her tone full of irony, but her eyes as she looked at Colleen were worried. 

Colleen looked down where her and Danny’s hands were intertwined and, despite the angry tears in her eyes, she smiled with genuine happiness. Claire let out a relieved breath and thought, not for the first time, that she was grateful that the strange people she knew had met each other. Grateful that she knew them, since with everything she’d experienced, she was pretty much as strange as they were, these days. 

“Anyway,” said Luke, “they more or less massacred the people in that house and paid kids in Harlem to clean it up. We figured it couldn’t be a coincidence that the Hand was going back there, so last night we went to check it out.” 

“And?” asked Claire. 

Luke shrugged. “Not a lot happened. Matt heard somebody, and we thought we caught a glimpse of somebody entering the building, but when we went in, we didn’t see anyone but we heard a door to the basement slam shut. There was a power surge for a few moments, so we thought maybe there was some kind of generator down there, but when we got the door open, they were gone, and there wasn’t any drug lab or anything, so….” For someone describing what sounded like a bust, his voice seemed disturbed. 

Claire tamped down on her frustration—why, oh _why_ was it so hard to just get a straight explanation about this stuff?—and asked, “So, what _did_ you see there?” 

“Creepy shit,” said Jessica frankly. “The place was clearly in use—recent footprints, food smells, shit like that—but it had more dust than a haunted house. The basement had some creepy torture chairs and big-ass jars of blood.” 

“We don’t know that it was human,” Matt said, like that made it any better. 

Jessica, who clearly agreed with Claire, narrowed his eyes at him. “Oh, yeah, ‘cause keeping vats of animal blood in your basement clearly isn’t a serial killer thing to do. Oh, and the jars of black goo. Those were totally normal, too.” 

“What kind of goo?” asked Colleen. 

“Hard to say.” Matt scratched his chin. “It wasn’t sewage. It wasn’t anything edible. It wasn’t tar—smelled different, and it had a different consistency. Simultaneously more fluid and more grainy. Had kind of a medicinal odor, but I couldn’t identify it with any specific medicine off the top of my head.” 

“What about this power surge?” Foggy asked. “You think that has anything to do with you guys switching bodies?” 

Luke, who’d been staring at the ceiling, looked at Foggy. “I’ve been trying to piece together the sequence of events. We got there in time to see the door shut. Danny wanted to head down there, but right then, everything in the place turned on. It was kind of a shock, so we stood there for a few seconds. Jessica’s right, the place was really dusty, and when the power turned on, this large fan on the upper level blew a lot of dust right in our faces. There was also a little…I don’t know, kind of a buzz in the floor. Static electricity, or vibrations from the floor below, or something. All of that happened within a minute, I would say, and then everything turned off again. The basement door was locked, so Jessica kicked it in. We investigated the place for about fifteen minutes, I would say. Like Jessica says, the place looked like some kind of mad scientist’s storage facility. Blood, chemical containers, whatever that goo was. The works. Matt found a trap door, but when we opened it, it seemed to lead into the sewer. Nobody was in the mood for a trek through the sewer, so we decided to put a pin in it and regroup tomorrow. Which I guess is today.” He shrugged. “The whole thing was over real fast, and not a lot happened. After that, we all went home. I can’t speak for anyone else, but my trip back home was uneventful.” 

Somewhere, a car horn honked, and Danny squeezed his eyes tightly closed, curling into a ball. Colleen pulled him into her arms, and Claire felt something heavy and cold in her stomach. Back when she’d first met Matt, his senses had been fascinating to her, the range of them, the way he found metaphors to talk about things like bones shifting and air flowing. She’d ended up pulling away from him, but she’d never stopped being interested in how his senses worked. Now, seeing what he had to be putting up with every day as it pressed in on Danny, that interest felt…heartless, like Burstein’s scientific fascination with Luke’s body had felt heartless. 

Matt bit his lower lip. “Yeah,” he said. “Nothing happened to me when I went home. Some kind of delayed effect from something in the Hand facility, I guess.” He was still looking at Danny while he said it. 

Claire couldn’t take it. “That power surge could have been the Hand activating something,” she said, standing up to pace with her coffee. She pushed away that cold feeling and started turning over ideas in her head. There wasn’t any time to linger over feelings, not when they had to figure out how to fix this. “Some kind of…body-switching machine. The dust that blew on you could have been part of it. Or the goo in the basement. We should get samples of both of them—and the blood. Find out what’s in them.” 

“So….” Foggy set his mug down on the coffee table. “More breaking and entering then, huh?” 

There was a time to worry about misdemeanors, and there was a time when your boyfriend and friends had literally switched bodies, probably due to the machinations of a centuries-old cult that could bring people back from the dead using dragon bones. “You got a better idea?” 

“Go to the police?” he suggested. “Not—not about the body-switching thing, obviously that’s not gonna fly, but about the drug-running? Or the creepy serial killer stuff? Maybe they could arrest some of these couriers, get something helpful out of them?” 

“That’s assuming they know anything,” Matt pointed out. “It could very well be that they’re being manipulated without any real information about Gao’s larger plan. That would be consistent with her MO so far.” 

“It’s not a bad idea, though.” Luke sat up. “I should give Misty a call, she could—” He frowned. “Or, ah. Jess, maybe you should give Misty a call. As me.” 

Right. Because Luke looked and sounded like Danny Rand right now. Anyone looking for him would find Jessica, and the same with the rest of them. 

The same realization seemed to dawn on Jessica, who downed the rest of her vodka in one gulp then shook her head. “I mean, I can give it a try. But shit, how the hell are we gonna do this? Rand can’t be a lawyer. Hell, he can’t get from one room to another without help.” 

“That’s not fair,” Danny protested. 

“It kind of is. And Murdock, you just gonna take over my caseload?” 

Matt made a face. “Well. I have some investigating experience, but I’m not sure how well it would work without my senses.” 

“That’s what I thought,” said Jessica firmly. “Whatever the next step is in fixing this, we gotta lay down some ground rules for how we’re gonna handle this until we’re back in our own bodies. We can get Malcolm to blow off my clients—tell ‘em I’m working the case and I’ll get back to them if there are any developments, that kind of shit. In the meantime, Murdock, don’t get me into anything I’m gonna have to get myself out of later. And do _not_ look at me naked in a mirror or something.” 

“Wasn’t really planning on it,” said Matt, raising an eyebrow, but Jessica wasn’t done. 

“I’m serious. You want to take advantage of my eyes to look at porn online or something, I don’t care, but my body is _mine_ , and anything you touch, you touch professionally, or I’ll rip your goddamned head off once you’re back in your own body.” 

Foggy looked a little freaked by her vehemence, but Claire could understand it—she didn’t think for a moment that Matt would take advantage of the situation, but Jessica had been through a lot when it came to others having control of her body, and Claire couldn’t blame her for wanting to make sure her boundaries were crystal clear. Matt seemed to get that, because he nodded seriously and said, “Understood. I won’t touch anything I don’t have to.” He hesitated. “Would you be all right with my using a cane to get around, or would that cause you problems later?” 

She squinted at him, apparently knocked out of her previous train of thought. “I don’t care, but can’t you just use my eyes to get around?” 

He gave her a small, not particularly happy smile. “It’s, ah. It’s great, but it’s kind of a lot to deal with. I mean, you saw me on the way over here. You’re used to using visual signals to gauge things like size and distance and where you are in space. I’m…not.” 

“Right.” She huffed out a breath. “Use a cane, don’t use a cane, whatever. Push comes to shove, I can say it was for a case or something.” 

“If we’re talking about rules for each other’s bodies…” Luke said softly. “Jess, I’d appreciate it if you could take it down a notch with the booze. My skin may be bulletproof, but my liver’s not.” 

Jessica looked at the glass in her hand like she’d never seen it before. “Oh. Shit, yeah, I didn’t…sorry. I’ll—I’ll drink coffee or something.” 

“Go for it, mama,” he said, smiling. Then, a little more seriously, “Another thing. You’ve gotta take it easy with the bashing in doors and mouthing off to cops. A pretty white woman who can lift a car with one hand can get away with that—a big black guy with a record can’t.” 

“But you’re a hero!” said Danny indignantly, and Luke smiled, a sardonic twist to his mouth that looked impish on Danny’s features but would have probably looked more resigned on Luke’s. 

“And that may help me with people in Harlem, but it doesn’t tend to get me anywhere with cops. Thanks to Misty, I’ve kind of got a truce with them at the moment, but I’d appreciate it if somebody who looks like me could avoid getting arrested between now and whenever we get switched back.” 

If such a thing was possible, Jessica looked even more shaken by this than she had by his remark about her drinking. “Got it,” she said shortly. “Miss Congeniality, that’s me.” 

“Thanks,” said Luke. To Danny, he turned and said, “How about you, Danny? Any rules for me while I’m in your body?” 

Danny drew his knees up to his chest as he thought about it. With the sound-blocking headphones still covering his ears and the little twitching thing he did periodically, like he was feeling something in the air that poked at him, Claire thought, he looked…surprisingly Matt-like. Thinking about it, she thought it was probably the ability to look like a miserable kicked dog while also being a buff, scarred-up guy. 

After a few moments, Danny said, “Well. Can you meditate?” 

Luke made a face. “Not really?” 

Danny nodded as if he had expected this. “That’s okay. I do try to keep my body clean of impurities—alcohol, processed sugar, caffeine, that kind of thing. Except for Frappucinos. I love Frappucinos.” 

“Got it,” said Luke, looking like he was trying not to laugh. “No booze, try to eat healthy. Anything else?” 

“I don’t think so,” Danny said. “I technically have a job at Rand, but I’m not there very often, just for quarterly board meetings. Sometimes Ward wants me to come hear a proposal or give an interview or something, but mostly I just help Colleen at the dojo and, you know, crime-fighting stuff. So whatever you want to do is cool." 

“Sounds good,” said Luke. “Matt?” 

Matt startled. “Hmm?” 

“Any rules for Danny?” 

He frowned thoughtfully. “Huh. I don’t know that I have _rules_ so much as…advice. We might want to take a few moments so I can give you a few pointers on using a cane.” 

“Really?” asked Danny. “You can’t—you don’t think I can use your senses?” He genuinely seemed a little hurt about it. It struck Claire as absurd, but then, what about this _wasn’t_ absurd? 

Matt smiled apologetically. “It’s not you. It just takes a lot of concentration and practice, and I’m hoping that we’ll all be back in our own bodies soon enough that it wouldn’t be worth worrying about. Meditation is a really good idea, so keep up with your normal routine there—I find it really helpful trying to filter out a lot of the more…obtrusive sensations, and for pain management. Sleep….” He winced. “Sleep’s going to be hard. If you can find something specific to focus on, that helps.” 

“You mentioned pain management,” Colleen said, eyes wide. “Are painkillers or sleeping pills an option?” 

“Not…not a great one,” he said. Darting a sidelong look at Foggy and Claire, he added, “I don’t know the neurochemistry behind it, but most painkillers stronger than aspirin tend to really disrupt my senses and upset my stomach, and the few times I tried sleeping pills, I ended up…ah, you know what, it’s not worth getting into, but it’s not a good idea.” 

Danny looked genuinely alarmed, as did Foggy. “You and I are gonna talk about that sometime, buddy,” he said, and Matt rubbed at the bridge of his nose. 

“If you want,” he said. “In the meantime, that’s all the general advice I have, Danny. Obviously, if you have anything else you need help with, just let me know.” 

“Okay, said Danny, still looking overwhelmed. “So, what’s our plan? Luke, or Jessica, or Luke and Jessica go to talk to Detective Knight?” 

“About _what_?” Jessica’s lip curled up in scorn. “How’s she going to help us?” 

“She could give us a name and address on the runner from last night,” said Luke calmly. “He wasn’t one any of us recognized, and he was there at the scene when…whatever happened, happened. For all we know, he’s the one who did it to us. We find out who he is, maybe we go talk to him. Find out what he has to say for himself.” 

“I still say we need samples of those substances from the basement,” said Claire. “If that building’s still owned by the Chaste, or some shell company the Hand’s associated with, it could take forever for them to get a search warrant, and who knows in the meantime if that stuff is toxic?” 

“I could get it,” Matt volunteered. 

“Not by yourself you couldn’t.” Foggy’s expression was determined. “You said yourself you’re having a hard time dealing with sight and visual stuff. Bad enough to be breaking into buildings when you’re you, much less when you’re figuring out how to do stuff in somebody else’s body—and breaking into a building full of creepy magical whatevers? Bad idea.” 

Matt flung his head back and groaned. “ _Foggy_. If the place is actually occupied, I’ll just _leave_. And Claire’s right, we need to find out what that stuff was.” 

Colleen looked from Matt to Danny and back again, looking conflicted. Claire could guess what she was thinking—go and help Matt get the samples, or stay with her suffering boyfriend? The question was answered, however, by Danny. 

“I’ll go, too,” he said firmly. “I know I don’t know how to—how to control all the sounds and smells and whatever like you do, Matt, but I can help figure out if the Hand’s in there doing something or someone’s coming, the way you help us when we go out.” 

“Danny, are you sure?” asked Colleen. He nodded, and Colleen looked at Matt, her chin set. “Then I’m going, too.” 

Matt looked like he was thinking about objecting, but ultimately he said, “Yeah. Yeah, probably a good idea to have a fighter with us who isn’t adjusting to being in a new body.” 

“Exactly,” said Colleen, looking like she was shedding a little of her insecurity with the prospect of something concrete to do in front of her. “We’ll get samples of the blood, the dust, and the goo, and maybe you can see if you can get Misty to run them at the crime lab or something.” 

“Yeah,” said Luke, drawing the word out, “not sure she’s gonna go for that. But I guess it’s worth a try.” 

Foggy sighed. “I guess the moral of the story is that I’m eating brunch alone, huh?” 

At the mention of food, Claire’s stomach growled. Matt met her eyes—for probably the first time in their friendship—and he cocked his head curiously at her. She wasn’t sure what he was looking for—sure, she was hungry, but she wasn’t going to tell him and the rest of them to sit back and enjoy being in other people’s bodies while they sat around and ate. It wasn’t exactly easy to convey all that in an expression, though, and even if she could, it wasn’t like Matt would be able to interpret it, so she just shrugged. Matt slowly turned back to Foggy. “Um,” he said, “we could get brunch, if you wanted. Have you ever eaten at Claire’s mom’s place?” 

** 

Colleen liked Soledad’s food, but the sight of Danny struggling with a plate of fresh fruit and a plain piece of toast was painful enough that it ruined her appetite a little. 

Brunch had been a little awkward. Nobody was really in the mood for small talk, Danny was tasting things like dirt and bug shit in his food, and Matt had to close his eyes while he ate to avoid stabbing himself in the face with a fork. They hadn’t told Soledad about the body-switching, so Jessica was awkwardly pretending to be Claire’s boyfriend, and doing a lousy job of it—her attempts at imitating Luke’s banter seemed desperate, and her movements were stiff and almost mechanical. Soledad probably thought they were nuts. But they were all going to need energy to get through the day. But they were all going to need energy to get through the day, and so, food, even nobody felt like eating. 

Once they were done, though, they were going to find those samples, figure out what and who had done this, and fix it. 

They would. 

Afterwards, they split up, Claire, Luke, and Jessica heading for the police precinct. Foggy hovered uncertainly on the sidewalk, shifting from foot to foot. “So. Uh. I know the idea is to switch you back, but if that doesn’t happen today…anything you always wanted to see, Matt?” 

Matt blinked. “I mean. The sky. You. It’s not really something I spend a lot of time thinking about anymore. Maybe….” He pursed his lips. “Do you know if there are any pictures, or, or videos of my dad online?” 

“Like his last fight or something? I’ll look. If I find anything, I’ll text you the link.” He hesitated. “Do you…I could call Karen, if you wanted. Maybe for drinks this evening.” 

“I, ah….” He swallowed. “If Karen wants. No pressure. If it’s too weird for her, I completely understand.” 

“Right,” said Foggy, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Well. I’m off. Try not to get arrested. Or captured by evil ninjas. Or switch bodies with evil ninjas.” 

“We’ll try not to,” said Matt with a grin. “See you later, buddy.” Foggy wished them all goodbye and turned to walk toward the subway station, but before he got too far, Matt called his name, and he turned back around. 

“What’s up?” he asked. 

Matt smiled again, kind of shy this time. “You want to go see a movie or something?” 

Foggy’s returning smile was the happiest he’d looked all morning. “Absolutely,” he said. “Definitely. Let’s do that.” 

Matt smiled after Foggy until he vanished from sight, rounding the corner of the block. When he turned back to Colleen and Danny, his face was solemn. “Let’s go find our samples.” 

They walked in silence for a long few moments. Matt had given Danny an extra cane and a brief rundown on how to use it, and Danny was doing well enough to keep himself on the sidewalk and from tripping over anything, but despite the headphones he was still wearing, he flinched at every noise. Matt was using his to keep himself from walking into people. It was unsettling, for Colleen. Danny was one of the most gifted martial artists she’d ever seen and worked with, and Matt constantly moved like he could see in 360 degrees and five seconds into the future—the uncertain, stumbling ways they were moving now just struck her as wrong. And it only made it worse that Danny looked like Matt and Matt like Jessica. The dissonance was jarring, to the point where it seemed strange to Colleen that she was in her own body. It was like being at the airport, watching the conveyor belt at the bag claim go around long enough that you could trick yourself into thinking the floor and not the belt was moving. 

“Why do you think they did this to us?” 

Colleen was shaken out of her reverie by Danny. “Hmm?” 

“The Hand. I don’t get what the point is. If they wanted to kill us, why not just try to kill us?” 

“Well. As far as we could tell, there was only the one person,” Matt pointed out, though he didn’t look too confident at the pronouncement. “Maybe he was hoping it would happen faster, disorient us enough that he’d have the advantage of us.” 

“Maybe,” said Danny dubiously. “I’ve never heard of the Hand being able to do something like that, though. I know they’ve been able to call on dark powers before, but being able to switch people’s souls around?” He turned his head, trying to find Colleen. “Colleen? You ever heard of anything like this?” 

_Dark powers_. To Colleen, the Hand had been a safe, clean place to stay, martial arts classes in the morning, good food three times a day, people telling her that she was valuable and had a purpose in life. She swallowed. It had all been a lie, she knew that now, but that didn’t stop her from missing that sense that she would always have a home to go back to. That feeling of calm. She cleared her throat. “No,” she said. “My experience with the Hand was very un-supernatural. Lot of martial arts, and philosophy, but not a lot of mysticism. I knew about the Iron Fist, but not, like…we were really excited when we thought it _might_ really exist, but we didn’t really expect to find it in a normal person in the real world.” Maybe Bakuto had. “I didn’t, anyway,” she corrected. 

“Hmm.” Matt reached down to fiddle with the hem of his shirt. “I know they...they can come back from the dead, and bring other people back. That seems to suggest they have at least some access to—I don’t know, people’s life forces, or something. It could be that that’s a related process to what happened to us.” 

“Why, though?” Danny wanted to know. “If that’s something they know how to do, why? Why would they even try to do that?” 

“Well.” Matt looked up, pausing in his tracks for a moment to stare at the sky. “Foggy mentioned _Face/Off_ earlier. You ever seen that?” 

“No,” said Danny, confused. 

Colleen shook her head. She didn’t actually watch that many movies. “Is that Nicolas Cage?” 

“Yeah, and John Travolta. He’s an FBI agent who switches faces with Nicolas Cage, who’s a criminal, to go undercover and find out about his plans. But then you’ve got crime boss Nicolas Cage with an FBI agent’s face, which lets him infiltrate the guy’s life. I don’t know. Maybe I’m off base, but it seems like an organization with a history of corrupting politicians and worming their way into corporations would have a lot of use for a process that lets their members look like someone else.” 

A chill ran through Colleen’s blood. If the Hand could plant their own people in hospitals and universities and governments just looking like themselves, how much more damage could they do if they could steal, say, Danny’s face? “Maybe it was a mistake,” she said. “Maybe you weren’t supposed to switch bodies with each other, but with members of the Hand, and they screwed it up. Maybe the whole thing was a trap to lure you there.” 

The three of them took a moment to let the impact of that hit them. “Ugh,” Danny groaned finally. “I thought once we took out the Fingers, they’d have to just…go away. Like cutting the head off a snake.” 

“Maybe it’s like Hydra,” said Matt, his face bleak. “Cut off one head, two more grow back.” 

“We’ll deal with them,” Colleen said, with more confidence than she actually felt. “But first we have to get you and the others back the way you’re supposed to be.” 

It wasn’t too long a walk from Soledad’s to the last hideout of the Chaste, but they stopped a block away, just in case. “Danny,” Matt said, “can you hear whether there’s anybody in there?” 

“I don’t…how do I tell what’s coming from there and what’s coming from everywhere else?” Danny asked, looking panicked. Colleen squeezed his hand, but she had no idea what to tell him. 

Matt looked intently at Danny, and a stray thought hit Colleen—was it like looking in a mirror for him? Seeing himself in detail for the first time in twenty years? 

“Think of all the sounds you’re hearing right now. Layers and layers of them, right?” 

“Yeah, kind of,” said Danny nervously. 

“What you want to do is eliminate some of those layers. The cars that are far away sound different than the ones on the street next to us, don’t they?” 

“Yeah….” 

“So don’t pay attention to the ones that are close. They don’t matter. Obviously you’re gonna hear them, but listen past them. It’s like…you’re trying to talk with your friends on the bus, but you’re stuck sitting next to a stranger who’s talking really loudly on their cell phone. Can you kind of block out the close sounds, to listen to the ones that are farther away?” 

Danny scrunched his face up in concentration. “Kind of? I think so.” 

“Good,” said Matt warmly. “Now it’s a matter of distance. We’re about a block away, to the south of the building. Think about how far a block is. Can you pin down sounds that are about a block away?” 

Was that how it actually worked for Matt? A process of eliminating sounds at various distances, trying to weed out the irrelevant ones? Just the thought of it gave Colleen a headache. Danny looked like he was getting a headache, as well. After a minute of intense concentration, he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t—I can’t do it.” 

“That’s okay,” said Matt, though his expression was disappointed, and Colleen felt a surge of defensiveness on Danny’s behalf. “We’ll get closer. I’ve gotta think that they’re not going to come out of their headquarters to attack us in broad daylight on a public street even if they’re in there, so we can get closer to the building and see what you can pick up from there.” 

“I’m sorry,” Danny said again. “I thought—I don’t know, I guess I thought that since I’d trained so hard in the past, I’d be able to pick this up a little faster. But everything’s _awful_. It’s all loud and smelly and I can’t see anything, and I don’t think I could win a fight with Colleen’s beginners at this point. I don’t know how you do this.” 

Matt smiled at him. “Go a little easier on yourself,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of years of practice being me, and a year of really intense training. You’ve had, what, four or five hours to get used to it? You’re doing fine.” 

“I hate this,” Danny said flatly. “Your qi flow is totally different, and I know Luke’s being careful, but the Iron Fist is _my_ responsibility. I want my own body back.” 

“I know,” said Matt, his smile slipping. “Me, too.” 

Colleen knew it was rude, but she could feel an unconscious jolt of surprise at the wistfulness in his voice. Danny turned—probably picking up on the uptick in her heartbeat—and Matt gave her a serious look. “I know my life isn’t what everyone would want,” he said, “but it’s _mine_ , and I worked hard for it, and I don’t like having it stolen any more than you would.” 

“I know,” Colleen said, knowing she sounded pathetic. “I didn’t mean….” 

“It’s all right, Colleen,” he said. Some of the tension slipped out of his face, and he just looked tired. It was a familiar expression, Colleen thought, since Jessica looked like that pretty often. “Let’s just…let’s just get over there.” 

When they were on the sidewalk in front of the building, Matt had Danny listen again. It must have been easier closer up, because his face lit up. “That’s wild!” he said, smiling broadly. “I can hear the different rooms—like sound bouncing off the walls or something? I don’t know, I can’t explain it, but that’s what it sounds like.” 

Colleen couldn’t help but smile. “That’s awesome, Danny. Do you hear anyone in there?” 

He shook his head. “Rats. Literal rats. I think. But definitely not people.” 

“They can suppress their heartbeats if they try,” Matt warned. “You sure there’s nobody?” 

“The coast is clear,” said Danny confidently. 

Matt grinned. “Then let’s go.” 

The door was locked, but Matt pushed open so hard the doorknob went through the door and the bolt was pushed out of the door frame. 

“Wow,” said Colleen. 

“I wasn’t even trying to do that,” said Matt, looking a little dazed. “Jessica is _really_ strong.” 

On the inside, the place felt like a tomb. The blood stains had been washed from the walls and floor, and the weapons had been removed from the racks on the walls—Colleen felt a pinch of regret that that Tsukamoto had probably been auctioned off to some collector who wouldn’t appreciate it the way she did. Other than that, though, the place was eerily familiar, the furniture just where she remembered, the dojo looking just like it had, Colleen imagined, when the Hand had massacred its inhabitants. And yet…Jessica had been right, it hadn’t been _nearly_ long enough for there to be this much dust over everything. And when Colleen ran a finger through it, it felt weirdly grainy. More like sand than dust, but finer. “Weird,” she said. 

Matt looked around, taking it all in. “It’s a mess,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Danny agreed. “Whatever the Hand’s doing, they’re clearly not doing it upstairs.” 

“Probably keeps people from poking around if they do all the dirty work in the basement,” Colleen said. “Who cares about an abandoned building if the bills are being paid and the neighbors don’t see anyone moving around in there?” 

“Squatters, maybe,” said Matt. “Jesus. I hope nobody’s tried to squat here.” 

Colleen swallowed. “Yeah.” She grabbed one of the sterile sample containers Claire had given her out of her bag and brushed some dust off of the table with the sharpening stone into it. 

“Hey.” Matt pointed to an upper level, with a loft overlooking the workshop at the front. A large vent shaft at the top let in a faint breeze and even a little daylight from whatever room it led into. “I think that’s where the fan that blew the dust on us was.” 

“You were in here?” 

He shook his head. “In the dojo. The door to the basement is in there.” 

They walked through the dojo, Colleen containing a shudder. It felt…disrespectful, almost, to be treading on the floor where those people had died. There were still faint stains there that the kids who’d been paid to drag the bodies away had missed. How much _more_ disrespectful, she wondered, to set up shop in the basement? Kill the Chaste, take their safe house. Whatever bullshit they spewed about being devoted to life, this was the underside of it. 

The basement itself was a horror show. Danny, Jessica, Matt, and Luke hadn’t been kidding about the large bottles of blood against the wall, and the chair. It had straps on it for holding someone down. Colleen could remember being in a chair like that, remembered looking at a row of similar bottles once—red blood, clear plasma, Brian and Mary hovering over her… 

_What was that you used to say, Sensei? A single arrow is easily broken. Because right now, you look pretty broken to me._

_After all that we’ve been through, at least we can take some comfort knowing that in your final moments, you’ll still be giving to the Hand._

Her shoulder hurt, and she realized it was because she had stumbled back against the wall, sliding down it to sit on the floor. Danny and Matt were squatting next to her on the floor, looking worried and saying her name. They were going to get the dust on themselves, she thought inanely. It was already all over her pants. 

“Colleen? It’s me, Danny. Are you okay?” 

She came back to herself and reached out to touch Danny’s face, taking her hand away at the realization of how different Matt’s jaw and stubble felt. “I’m okay,” she said. “Just. Ah. I have really bad memories of just how the Hand gets their blood.” 

“Yeah,” said Matt solemnly. “I understand. But you’re safe now. We’re here.” 

Danny drew her into a hug. She clung to his unfamiliar form, taking comfort at least in his warmth, in the knowledge that she was with people who cared about her, _really_ cared about her, and that if her boyfriend’s body was strange to her right now, well, at least it was the body of a friend. 

But a warrior couldn’t sit licking her wounds against the wall. A warrior had to keep fighting until she’d done what she’d set out to do. She struggled to her feet. “Where’s the black goo?” she asked. 

If all she could do to make this right was get samples for Claire, than by God, she was going to get samples for Claire. She’d been helpless before. She wasn’t now. The Hand didn’t get to come back again and use her friends like chess pieces in their endless, bloody game. 

She’d beaten them once before. She’d beat them again. 

** 

If you’d told twenty-year-old Claire, or twenty-five-year-old Claire, or, hell, even thirty-year-old Claire that one day she was going to be so well acquainted with the cops in her local precinct that they’d greet her by name when she came in, she would have thought you were nuts. Especially after meeting Matt and finding out that a significant percentage of the NYPD had been on the payroll of a mob boss. 

And yet, here she was. Standing with Luke and Jessica in front of Misty Knight’s desk. 

Things had been a little…well, maybe _strained_ between Luke and Misty since the business at Midland Circle. Misty had claimed she didn’t blame Luke for her losing her arm and being more or less stuck on desk duty for the foreseeable future, and she and Claire had had a lot of talks about her rehabilitation and the various goings-on with their superpowered friends, but Misty was still pissed, and Claire didn’t think her job was helping. Misty loved being a detective, but she didn’t love processing paperwork and being treated with kid gloves by superiors who by turns distrusted and pitied her, and she didn’t seem particularly happy in her work these days. Luke, for his part, felt guilty as hell about what had happened, and seemed more determined than ever to keep Misty out of the loop when it came to his activities with Jessica, Danny, Matt, and Colleen. Claire could have told him that didn’t help—hell, she _did_ tell him that didn’t help—but under his calm exterior, Luke was like a rock below, unyielding and occasionally hard. 

It wasn’t that surprising, then, when Misty looked up from her computer to give them an irritated glare. “Well, if it isn’t Richie Rich and the Hero of Harlem, here to brighten my day.” 

“Yeah, about that,” said Jessica, jerking a thumb at Luke. “That’s actually Luke. I’m Jessica Jones. You know, the PI. You and I go way back.” 

Misty looked at the ceiling as if praying for patience. “Cut the shit, Luke,” she said. 

“No shit,” said Jessica. “And you know, you could be a little nicer about Rand. The guy can be a pain in the ass, but he's kind of okay. He did let you stay in his hospital for free.” 

That made Misty sit up. Luke wasn’t one for throwing around four-letter-words. “The hell?” 

“It’s true, Misty,” said Luke earnestly. “I know it sounds weird, but it’s true. We’re pretty sure it’s in connection with the Hand.” 

“The Hand?” Her eyes widened. “The secret ninja dragon-bone folks with the swords? Earthquake-causing Midland Circle Hand, that Hand?” 

“That’s the one.” Luke smiled apologetically at her. Charming son-of-a-bitch. “They were running a heroin ring a while back, and we thought they’d restarted it, so we followed one of their couriers back to a place on 151st and Amsterdam—you’ll remember the place, Candace’s brother Cole got picked up there right before he died. We didn’t catch the courier, but we saw a bunch of weird stuff in the basement. We all went home, and….” He gestured toward himself. “I wake up white and shaggy in Colleen Wing’s bed.” 

“Yeah, okay, I get the picture.” She pushed her rolling chair away from her desk and stood, the fluorescent lights reflecting harshly from her prosthetic arm. “Keep it down. People around here are already suspicious about my relationship with all y’all. Let’s take a walk.” 

Once they were outside and around the block, Misty leaned in close to Luke and Jessica with a frown on her face. “Why is this the first I’m hearing of the Hand being back?” 

As much as Claire had encouraged Luke to talk with Misty, this probably wasn’t the time for this particular argument. “He was thinking of you,” she interjected. “Like you said, people are already suspicious about your involvement with all this…superhero stuff. He was just trying to keep you out of it.” 

Misty shot her a wry look. “Does being Danny Rand mean he can’t talk?” 

Luke sighed. “Okay, Misty. Maybe you’re right, maybe I should have found some way to keep you in the loop. I didn’t want to put you in a difficult position—” 

“But now you’re here to do just that.” Misty nodded, as if confirming something to herself. “Okay, Luke. What is it? What do you want?” 

“You’re gonna help us out?” Jessica looked and sounded taken aback, and Misty gave her a snide grin. 

“You think I’m not pissed? I am. This is some crazy bullshit, and I do not like being kept in the dark when those creepy Hand assholes are active again. But I don’t think either one of you’d come to me like this if it were a prank, and it ain’t like you’re just gonna switch back to being yourselves if I send you packing, so come on out with it. What do you need from me?” 

Luke smiled at her. “We think the courier either knows what happened or actually is the perp. If you could see if you have any records on him, we’d appreciate it.” 

“Great,” Misty muttered. Louder, she added, “You got a name?” 

“We were actually hoping you could give _us_ a name,” said Jessica, and Misty groaned. 

“You just live to make my life more difficult.” 

“He wasn’t a big guy,” Luke said hurriedly, his tone placating. “Maybe 5’7”, 5’8”, average build. Caucasian, little older than most of the couriers, probably mid- to late twenties, blond hair, blind, freckles. I didn’t get a good look at him, but I’m pretty sure that’s accurate.” 

Misty shook her head. “You gotta give me more than that. This is New York City, there’s gotta be a ton of guys who meet that description. Hell, why don’t you ask Murdock?” 

Luke gave her an unimpressed look. “From what Matt says, these couriers don’t hang out at places like the Braille library, and it’s not like all blind people know each other.” 

“Fair enough,” Misty acknowledged with a quick, sheepish smile. “But I still need more to go on if you want me to find your guy.”

Flipping through something on her phone, Jessica seemed to find whatever it was she’d been looking for. “Here’s a picture,” she said, handing the phone to Misty. “If that helps.” Oh, thank God, Claire thought. 

“When did you get a _picture_ of him?” asked Luke incredulously, and Jessica shrugged. 

“Assuming it’s the same guy who’s been making regular trips to that address, when I was doing surveillance on him earlier.” He kept staring, and she rolled her eyes. “Private detective, remember? Taking creepy pictures of people is pretty much in the job description.” 

“Well,” said Misty, staring at the phone, “this is a pretty good shot, L—Ms. Jones. I’ll see what I can do.” 

“Not to be pushy or anything, but we’d kind of like to be back in our own bodies soon.” Jessica picked at her thumbnail. “Fucking Murdock’s in my body, and the man hasn’t seen a woman in twenty years.” 

“God, what is my life,” said Misty under her breath. Claire could sympathize. 

While Misty went to run the photo, Luke, Claire, and Jessica went for a walk. Misty had told them not to wait around, to go find something else to do, but without samples or anything else to go on, there wasn’t much they could do about the body-switching, and Claire couldn’t imagine going back to talk with Bobby Fish about possible facilities for her clinic right now. She had to do something; that restless sense that things were happening outside of her control had settled over her again. 

“Hey.” Luke nudged her with an elbow, knocking her out of her tense reverie, and she looked up. Jessica was about half a block ahead of them now. “How’re you holding up?” 

“Me?” she snorted. “I’m not the one in Danny Rand’s body. How are _you_ holding up?” 

“Hmm.” 

When he didn’t answer any more than that, Claire turned to grasp his hand. Fuck any acquaintances that happened to walk by and think she was cheating on Luke, she decided. He was going through a completely bizarre experience, and the least he deserved was a hand to hold. 

“Luke,” she said, raising her voice a little. “You all right?” 

He gave her a tired smile and squeezed her hand. “Yeah, Claire. I’m all right.” His gaze fell on Jessica, walking quickly with a tightness to her body that looked completely foreign on Luke. “It’s, ah. It’s a little weird, being outside yourself like this. Seeing yourself the way other people see you.” 

“Not _exactly_ the way other people see you,” said Claire, relieved he was at least talking to her. “Jessica Jones always looks like she’s ready to bulldoze her way through a concrete wall—give her an extra foot of height and a boatload of muscles, she’s like a human tank.” 

“And I’m not like that?” Luke asked wryly. “I’ve crashed through a few walls in my day.” 

“Little different, babe,” she said. “I don’t know, it’s a body language thing.” 

“Yeah.” He was quiet for another few steps before saying, “You know, I’d never been to New York before I became Luke Cage. Carl Lucas just never made it up that far north. I liked my bar in Hell’s Kitchen—I liked the people there, I liked that I could lie low. But it wasn’t home the way Harlem is. I’ve never been to a place that just felt so right, so fast, like I had a place there just waiting for me to step into it, selfish as that sounds.” 

“Doesn’t sound selfish to me,” Claire said. She happened to agree—Luke _did_ have a place in Harlem, an important role no one else could fill. 

He smiled warmly at her before his expression slid into a lost expression she knew painfully well on Danny’s face. “I honestly didn’t know how much it meant to me to have that place until now. I’m not—you know, I like Danny a lot, but I can’t…all the things I built my identity on feel like they’re gone. I’m not him, I’m not Danny, but I don’t feel like me, either.” He shuddered, and Claire frowned. 

“Hey,” she said. “We’re gonna get you switched back. But even if we don’t…you’re gonna get through this. You’re you, okay? Whatever body you’re in, whatever name I go by, I love you, and that hasn’t changed. You hear me?” 

Luke nodded and tapped on his thighs. “I hear you, Claire. But you know it’s not that simple.” 

No. No, of course it wasn’t. Claire swallowed. If they couldn’t put the four of them back in their own bodies… 

She couldn’t think about it. “Well, one thing’s for sure. When you find whoever did this to you, you should kick his ass.” 

“Think Jessica’s got that part covered,” said Luke, nodding in Jessica’s direction. She did look pretty angry. 

She tried drawing a little closer to Luke, but his pocket buzzed, ringing with soothing harp music. “It’s Misty,” Luke said. 

“Seriously, that’s your ringtone for Misty?” Claire shook his head. “So corny.” 

Luke rolled his eyes, pulling out his phone. “Hello?” And then, to Claire’s joy, his eyes lit with a familiar intensity, and he said, “Joe MacCready. 143rd and Broadway. Got it. Thanks, Misty. We owe you one.” He hung up and yelled, “Jess! We got him!” To Claire, he said, “Turned out the guy already had a pretty extensive juvie record, and one of the cops in the precinct recognized him from his pre-Hand courier days.” 

The hunt was on. 

There was always a chance, Claire feared, that they’d show up and Joe MacCready would be out, or not the guy they were looking for, but for once, their luck held good. A block out, Jessica’s head jerked around. “Luke,” she said sharply. “Check it out.” Across the street, a young, blond, blind guy was tapping his way down the street. 

“That the guy?” Claire asked. 

Luke smiled grimly and nodded. “Let’s go have a little chat with Mr. MacCready.” 

MacCready seemed to realize he was being followed after a few minutes and sped up, but he was no Matt Murdock, and the three of them were able to hustle him into an empty alleyway after a few blocks of trailing him. “So, asshole,” said Jessica, who’d pinned him up against the wall, “what did you do to us?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said MacCready, who wasn’t a good liar. Too smooth. Too confident in himself. “I don’t even know who you are, I’m blind.” 

“Well, let us help you out.” Luke drew nearer, up in MacCready’s face. “We’re enemies of the Hand, and we’ve been keeping tabs on you and your heroin-slinging buddies. Last night, we followed you into an abandoned Chaste safehouse before you vanished into the sewers like some kind of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Any of this ringing a bell?” 

MacCready, whose face had gone pale when the Hand was mentioned, said nothing, and Jessica pressed him harder against the wall. “You pulled us out of our own bodies,” she said tightly. “Like you split us down the middle into two parts and stuck us in a blender. If you thought we were just gonna let that go, then you’re even dumber than you look. If this is the Hand’s big comeback, I think it sucks. I think we’re gonna kick your asses even harder than we did last time.” 

At this, MacCready’s color returned, red and angry in his freckled face. “Don’t you dare disrespect the Hand,” he said sharply, and Jessica snorted. 

“Disrespect them? I’m about ready to drop another building on them, and you’re not doing anything to make me change my mind.” 

“I know you,” said MacCready in a low voice. “The ignorant ones. The traitors. The ones who were given great gifts and squandered them.” 

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Give it up, Fortune Cookie.” 

“Man,” said Luke, “you’re being _taken advantage of_. These people _blinded you_ , they’re making you deal heroin, you’re working in a house where they _murdered_ people. They’re bad news, and the deeper you get in with them, the more they’re gonna twist things until you don’t know up from down and the more they’re gonna pin on you. You think they’re gonna be there when you need them? Wake up! You’re just a pawn to them, someone they’re gonna throw away when they don’t have any use for you. I’ve seen it happen before.” 

“I’d listen to him,” Claire put in. God knew if she was some low-level runner for a crime syndicate, Luke’s little speech would have made _her_ think twice. 

But it just seemed to make MacCready angrier. “You don’t understand _anything_. The Hand has already sacrificed itself for its followers. But we’ve been given a second chance—they’ve _given_ us a second chance. To be reborn as something new. Something better.” He seemed to calm for a minute before giving them all a malicious grin. “You should be grateful. You’ve been given the chance to be reborn as something new, too.” 

Claire was speechless. Jessica wasn’t. “Yeah, okay, Hannibal Lecter,” she said. “Enough creepy bullshit. You gonna tell us anything useful?” 

“I’m no traitor,” said MacCready indignantly. “I’d never betray—” 

“Yeah, okay.” She grabbed him by his hair and smacked him against the wall; he slid down, dazed. 

Luke glared at Jessica. “What did I tell you? You _cannot_ go around assaulting people in broad daylight while you look like me!” 

Her mouth tightened. “You heard him. He’s not gonna tell us shit, and all it would take is for him to shout for help and we’re all fucked. For all we know, the block’s full of his Hand buddies.” 

“So you knock him out without even _asking_ the two of us?” Luke demanded, and she looked down. 

“All right,” she said. “Fine. You’re right. Sorry.” Turning on her heel, she slouched out of the alleyway. 

“Well,” said Claire into the silence that followed. “That could have gone better.” 

“Yeah.” Luke crossed his arms and looked down at their erstwhile prisoner. “What do you make of MacCready here?” 

Claire looked at him. Semi-conscious, slumped against a wall, he looked a lot less like a creepy fanatic and more like a guy who was in over his head. “Fanatic,” she said. “Clearly, he’s getting something from the Hand that he wasn’t getting from his life before. And it better be fantastic, if he agreed to blind himself and do…whatever the hell it is the Hand is doing.” 

“Maybe it let him be reborn,” said Luke sadly. “Leave his old life behind. I understand the impulse.” He shook his head. “Not that I wanted to be reborn as Danny Rand.” 

“No,” said Claire with a laugh. “You wanna fill Misty in on what happened? I think I should probably catch up with Jessica, make sure she’s okay.” 

Luke closed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea.” 

Jessica moved quickly when she was upset, and she was almost a block away by the time Claire caught up with her. It was lucky Luke was such a big guy—it made it easier for Claire to find her in the crowd. 

“Hey,” she said. “You all right? I know tempers were running a little hot back there, and—” 

Jessica looked at her, and Claire was shocked to see that it wasn’t anger in her face, but a sincere misery that made Claire’s stomach hurt. She looked near tears, which Claire _never_ wanted to see from either Luke or Jessica. “I fucked up, okay.” She sniffed. “I get it.” 

“Hey,” Claire said, reaching to clasp Jessica’s arm, “I’m not here to shout at you. I get it, the guy was creepy, and he wasn’t telling us anything useful. Not sure giving him a concussion’s gonna help anything, but I know you guys and your ‘punch now, ask questions later’ MO. It’s not that bad.” 

“No.” Jessica shook her head, drawing her mouth down into an unhappy curve. “Luke—I never want to do anything with his body that he doesn’t want me to do, and he _told_ me to control myself, and I just—I fucked it up.” 

Now Claire didn’t know what to say. Jessica had more reason than most to be sensitive to the question of what Luke wanted done with his body. And yeah, slamming the guy’s head into a wall wasn’t what Luke wanted done. 

It wasn’t something Claire could forgive on Luke’s behalf, but at the same time, Luke knew Jessica, and worried about her on the regular. Claire couldn’t imagine he’d hold a grudge. The whole situation was just so one-of-a-kind. Then again, Luke’s nerves were wound pretty tight right now, too. “Talk to him,” she said finally. “It—yeah, you have to respect each other’s bodies, and each other’s situations, but….” She didn’t know where her line of reasoning was going after that, so she just sighed and repeated, “Talk to him.” 

Jessica let out a shaky breath. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but this whole thing scares the hell out of me.” 

Claire thought of the manic, cruel expression on MacCready’s face when he’d told Luke and Jessica they ought to be grateful, and felt a cold chill that made her shiver despite the warmth of the sun on her shoulders. “Don’t tell anyone I said this, but me, too.” 

“Yeah.” Jessica wrapped her arms more tightly around herself and took a step back, running into a guy rounding the corner. 

The guy looked up from his phone and scowled at her. “Get out of the fucking way!” 

Jessica flipped him the bird, and then immediately lowered her hand, looking worried and contrite. “Shit,” she said to Claire. “We better….” 

It occurred to Claire that they were literally standing in the middle of the sidewalk, getting dirty looks from the crowd that had split to walk around them, talking about the ethics of occupying other people’s bodies. She wondered despairingly if she did this kind of thing often without even realizing it. Maybe people she ran into sorted her into the same slot as guys who ranted about alien invasions and conspiracy theorists who’d tell you on the subway about the JFK assassination being a hoax. “Let’s head back to my place,” she said. 

“Good idea,” said—not Danny, but Luke, and Claire jumped. 

“You scared me!” 

“Sorry,” he said. “I caught Misty up. She wanted to bring MacCready in for questioning, but I don’t think we have anything near specific enough to hold him for long, and if the Hand’s as active again as it looks like they are, I don’t want to tip them off.” 

Jessica nodded. “Makes sense.” She slumped over, which struck Claire as both sad and funny—there wasn’t any way to make yourself smaller when you were as big as Luke was. “Hey,” said Jessica. “Um. About before.” 

“It’s okay,” said Luke. 

She shook her head. “It’s not. Sorry.” 

Luke was silent for a long moment, and Claire wondered what he was thinking. She thought she could read him pretty well…when he looked like himself. His feelings and thoughts when he was in Danny’s body didn’t translate so easily. Finally, he said, “Let’s just…we can talk more at Claire’s.” 

Claire texted the others while they were walking, and they hadn’t been in her kitchen long enough for things to get awkward when Colleen, Matt, and Danny knocked on the door. 

Colleen slung the bag on her shoulder onto Claire’s kitchen table with a triumphant air. “Samples of dust, gunk, blood, everything.” 

They’d been thorough, Claire thought as she unzipped the bag. They’d gotten multiple samples of all of it. 

“So what do you think?” asked Danny. “If we find out what caused this, we can undo it, right?” 

Claire didn’t know how to answer that—the scientific side of how her friends were how they were was interesting to her, but she couldn’t _explain_ it, and she wasn’t some kind of mad scientist or wizard to just snap her fingers and figure out how to change them back with a wave of her magic wand. She didn’t want to get their hopes up, but she wasn’t about to admit defeat, either. 

Matt, who was peering at her face like someone would at hard-to-read handwriting, turned himself to face Danny and said, “Let’s find out what this stuff is first, huh?” 

Claire shot him a grateful smile, and after a moment of looking mildly confused, he returned it. 

“All right,” said Luke, “let’s dig out the microscope.” 

The rest of the crowd gathered around, staring at Claire in fascination as she prepared slides from one set of the samples Colleen, Danny, and Matt had gathered. The first, the blood, was the easiest. 

“Yep,” Claire declared. “That’s definitely blood.” 

Luke nodded. “Can you tell if it’s human?” 

Claire shrugged. “I’m not a forensic scientist. I know there are antibody serums you can add to a blood sample, and if it coagulates, it’s human, but that’s not really the kind of thing I keep around the house.” 

“Can we go buy it somewhere?” Colleen asked anxiously. 

Claire sighed. “We don’t even know if that would be helpful at this stage. Let’s get through the other samples first, okay?” 

She could say one thing for superheroes: the shit they brought into her life was never boring. The dust sample contained what looked like blood fragments and some kind of crystalline material that Claire didn’t think was regular sand, and the disgusting goopy stuff seemed to have both materials from the dust and blood in it, as well as vegetal matter. It had a strong, pungent smell. Claire genuinely wasn’t sure what, if anything, about either substance was weird enough to have magical body-switching powers, though her knowledge of what the Hand did with blood and bone didn’t make her feel awesome about having either one in her kitchen. 

Rubbing at the bridge of her nose, she pushed her chair back from the table. “I don’t know, you guys. There’s nothing here screaming ‘This is gonna make you switch back into your own bodies!’ I honestly can’t even tell what all’s in this dust. I’m gonna guess that the bone is that…dragon substance they used to make themselves immortal, but what do I know? Maybe they had a bunch of magical creature bones they use for their…mystical whatever.” 

Everyone visibly drooped. Luke took a deep breath and said, “Thanks for looking at it, Claire.” He reached out to take her hand, squeezing it gently. Despite her frustration, she smiled back, and he squeezed it again before turning back to the others. “I think our next step has to be to go back for MacCready, or any of the other couriers we can find. Maybe they can give us more information.” 

“Yeah, because we got so much out of him today,” said Jessica snidely, and Matt gave her a grim look. 

“I’m pretty good at getting information out of people.” 

Jessica’s sarcastic expression fell away and she straightened up. “ _No._ ” 

“What, you want to stay in Luke’s body?” Matt asked. 

“I know how you get information out of people, Devil Boy,” she said, “and A—you don’t have your super sneaky lie detector skills, and B—you don’t know what the hell you’re doing in my body. Remember what you did to the coffee cup this morning? You want to do that to a person?” 

Matt narrowed his eyes at her, looking ready to reply, but Claire cut him off. “She’s right. Matt, your usual MO isn’t gonna fly here, and even if it did, Jessica’s body, her call.” 

He nodded, looking unconvinced. “Fine. What’s Plan B?” 

“Well,” said Danny, “We just woke up this way, right? Maybe when we wake up tomorrow, we’ll all be in our own bodies?” 

Luke made a face. “Sure, maybe, man. But in case we don’t, we need to figure out how they did this and find a way to undo it.” 

“I know somebody,” Claire offered. She was hesitant to get on Facebook and drag old college friends into her weird-ass life, but, well, sometimes you had to do what you had to do. “My college roommate’s ex-girlfriend works at the state crime lab in Albany. Maybe I can get her to run the samples and see if she can tell us anything more about them.” _Sorry, Heather._

“That’s a great idea, Claire,” said Luke, his face brightening. “Meanwhile, we can go back to 151st and Amsterdam and see if it helps us remember anything else about last night. If we can recreate the situation just as it was when we switched originally, maybe we can switch ourselves back.” 

Jessica shrugged. “Worth a shot.” 

“I agree,” said Matt, but he looked troubled. 

“What?” asked Claire. Matt would keep a lid on whatever he was thinking unless it was dragged out of him. 

“Hmm?” 

“Come on. Matt, what’s the problem?” 

He looked down at the table. “Nothing. I just, uh. I think we have to consider that this may not be something we can do without cooperation from the Hand.” 

Well, there was an appalling thought. But unless Claire spontaneously developed some magic ninja body-switching skills…hell, she thought. Maybe Danny was right. Maybe the solution was for everyone just to go back to bed and wait for this lousy Saturday to be over. 

** 

Colleen hadn’t been wild about the idea of going back to that horrible building, but she wasn’t about to let Danny and the rest of them go into anything alone. Maybe Jessica could still more or less do her thing—Colleen wasn’t sure whether Luke could toss cars around like Jessica did, but he was still pretty incredibly strong—but Danny’s years of martial arts training were useless in Matt’s body, Matt was still having a hard time with spatial relations, and Luke could probably hold his own in a boxing match but couldn’t call on the power of the Iron Fist to give him any special advantage. 

The temperature had gone down with the sun, and the darkness and cold made the place seem even more haunted than it had during the day. Colleen shivered. 

Apparently Jessica had seen it, because she gave Colleen a small smile. “This place would give anyone the creeps.” 

“After we figure this magic business out,” said Luke firmly, “I’m telling Misty all about it and we’re getting the Hand out of this place.” 

“How?” Colleen wanted to know. 

“We’d have a pretty good argument that it’s a health hazard,” Matt said dryly. “And I’d say that turning a private gym or residence into a human experimentation lab is an illegal building conversion. Though we might leave the magic out when we explain that to the city.” 

“You and Nelson can handle that lawyer bullshit,” said Jessica. “Assuming you’re not too busy rescuing kittens and Nelson’s not too busy helping rich guys get away with shady shit.” 

Matt raised his eyebrows. “You have strange ideas about what lawyers do for a living.” 

“Not really,” said Jessica. “I do work for Hogarth on the side.” 

“Hey,” Danny objected hotly. “Lay off. Jeri’s an awesome lawyer.” 

Luke glared at all of them. “Hey,” he said. “None of this is getting us any closer to figuring out what happened last night.” 

“We’ve been over it already,” Jessica said, exasperated. “We go in, miss the guy, the lights turn on, fans blow dust in our faces, party over. Nobody saying ‘presto change-o,’ we didn’t get the goop on us, nothing.” 

“Well, obviously _something_ happened. The question is, what actually made us switch bodies?” 

Matt scratched at his chin and then jerked his hand away, apparently surprised by the lack of stubble there. “I guess my first guess would be the dust,” he said. “Since that’s the only foreign substance we actually had any contact with before collecting samples today.” 

Luke snapped his fingers in satisfaction. “All right. Now we’re thinking. Maybe the combination of the dust and the power surge? There was that kind of static in the floor.” 

“Not a power surge,” said Jessica. “It lasted too long, and that wouldn’t have turned on literally everything in the house for ten seconds or whatever.” 

Colleen nodded. “MacCready must have thrown a breaker. Or hell, maybe Gao. Maybe she was down there the whole time.” 

“I think Matt would have heard that,” said Danny with a frown. “I feel like I hear _everything_ right now.” 

Jessica turned to Matt. “Murdock?” 

Matt let out a sigh. “Hard to say. Gao can be really quiet when she wants to be, and I wasn’t listening for her, I was listening for our guy. Plus, the static shock and the dust in the face was kind of a distraction. But it would make sense if she were there. There’s got to be more to it than dust and a little static, and I don’t know that the Hand would be giving those secrets to low-level couriers.” 

A surge of anger made Colleen’s heart race. _Gao._ What the hell was her game? What did she have to gain here? She turned in place, taking in the room, trying to imagine what it had been like when everyone had been there the previous night. 

“Okay. Okay.” Luke nodded as if to himself, frowning in thought. “Sequence of events. We came in. We saw the guy run into the dojo, and we ran after him. Maybe ten seconds.” 

“ _I_ ran after him,” Danny corrected. “You kind of grabbed my shoulder for a moment.” 

“Right,” said Luke. “’Cause I thought it might be a trap. Which it turned out to be.” He shook his head as if shaking something out of it. “Wait. Was this before or after the lights turned on?” 

Jessica looked up at the ceiling. “Just before,” she told the ceiling. “Murdock leaned on me for just a second when Danny went by. I remember it because he got that alert look he gets when something bad’s coming, so I think I touched Luke’s arm to get his attention, and Luke was still holding onto Rand.” 

“Alert?” Luke looked at Matt. “What did you…hear, or feel, or whatever?” 

“The static in the floor,” said Matt. “It started about half a second before the lights turned on and the dust blew on us.” 

Danny cocked his head curiously at Matt. “How do you know when the lights turn on?” 

“There’s a little buzz of electricity in the bulb. Plus there’s a little spot of warmth that gets warmer as the lights are on for longer.” Matt joined Jessica in staring at the ceiling. The lights were off, but light from the streetlights filtered in through the window and covered the ceiling with shadows. He smiled ruefully. “I guess it’s a lot more intuitive to tell when there’s just…light where there wasn’t light before.” 

Colleen felt for Matt, but she wanted Danny back in his own body as quickly as possible. “Let’s try to recreate what happened last night,” she said. “I’ll go down to the basement and try to find a breaker. You guys stand where you were last night, and we’ll see what happens.” 

The basement still made Colleen’s skin crawl, but it didn’t take long to find the circuit breaker panel against one wall. She checked her watch. They’d synchronized them—she was supposed to pull the breakers in a minute. She studied them. None of the switches were labeled, but she figured the one at the bottom was probably still the main breaker, and that was probably what had been turned on last night. It was stupid, though—what, did secretive ninja cults just not need reminders of which switch went with which circuit? Did they have them memorized? Colleen didn’t remember that particular class from her days with the Hand. 

The timer on her watch went off, and she threw the circuit. Everything in the room suddenly hummed to life, and she blinked at the sudden brightness of the room. She counted, and at the count of ten, switched everything off again. Colored circles danced before her eyes, and she grabbed her flashlight and made her way back upstairs. 

_They won’t be back in their own bodies_ , she told herself sternly. _Don’t get your hopes up._ She still was almost running when she made it back into the front room. “Well?” she asked. 

“Still fucked up,” said Jessica shortly. 

Colleen swallowed her disappointment. “Well,” she said, “it didn’t happen right away last time, either.” 

“No,” said Matt. “But this time, the fan didn’t turn on. Did you turn on all the breakers?” 

“I turned on the master breaker,” said Colleen, irritated. “That should have turned everything on.” 

“Something must be disconnected from the main breaker, then.” Luke looked exhausted. “Because he’s right, the fan didn’t turn on, and there wasn’t that static in the floor, either.” 

Jessica groaned and cracked her knuckles. “Down to the chamber of horrors, then.” 

They spent about half an hour searching the building for a switch connected to the fan, and Luke even squeezed down into the sewer connection for a few minutes to see if there was something down there, but there was nothing. Matt tried to talk Danny through listening for hidden passages or rooms in the building, but it was no use—from what Danny said, it sounded like a nightmare of various sounds that he couldn’t quite put together, and if there was a switch hidden somewhere, it was in a small enough place that Danny couldn’t discern it. 

Demoralized, they all stood in the front room for a minute. Colleen tried to think of something else they could try, some permutation of actions they could rearrange for better results, but she hadn’t gotten much sleep the previous night, and she didn’t do her best thinking when she was upset. 

“Let’s see if the magic ingredient is sleep,” Jessica said finally. “Worked last time.” 

“Yeah,” Luke agreed. “Unless somebody else has any bright ideas, I say we go home, get some rest, and regroup tomorrow.” 

It felt too much like admitting defeat to Colleen. But even Sun Tzu praised the general who retreated without fear of disgrace if it was the right move. “Tomorrow,” she said. It was a promise—to Danny, to her friends, and to herself. Tomorrow, they’d fix this. 

** 

To Claire’s disappointment but not surprise, when she shook the shoulder of the man in her bed the next morning and asked, “Danny?”, he sat up and shook his head. 

“Still Luke.” 

She sat back against her headboard and thumped her head gently against the wall. Heather from college had agreed to run the samples, and Claire had driven them up to Albany while the rest of the gang returned to the scene of the crime, but she’d warned Claire that it would take a few days, and if Heather was anything like she’d been back in undergrad, curiosity wasn’t going to beat conscientiousness and make her bump Claire’s mysterious samples up her list of things to do. It might be worth going back to the house at 151st and Amsterdam to try and replicate the original switch again, but at this point, who knew? Maybe the dust and shit hadn’t even had anything to do with it. Matt might have been right—they really might need the Hand’s cooperation to undo this. In which case they were fucked. 

Claire opened her eyes to see Luke standing up and going through his closet, trying to find clothes that would fit. “Stupid,” he said to himself. “Should have grabbed some clothes from Danny before we split up last night.” 

“Hey,” she said, pushing her own doubts to the side. “We’re gonna fix this, Luke.” 

“Yeah,” said Luke heavily. “But in the meantime, we’re gonna have to try and draw less attention to ourselves. Going around in clothes that don’t fit, beating up blind couriers, and breaking into buildings ain’t gonna cut it.” He crumpled the shirt he was holding in one fist, then released it. Then he coughed and cleared his throat. “We need a plan.” 

Claire swallowed. “Yeah,” she said, and she picked up the phone to call Colleen. 

They met an hour later at Colleen and Danny’s dojo with duffel bags full of clothes for each other. Aside from a couple of snide remarks from Jessica to Matt about lingerie, the mood was somber. Claire guessed she wasn’t the only one who’d hoped that, against all odds, they’d managed to switch back overnight. 

“Look on the bright side,” said Foggy Nelson, who had come along with Matt. “We can catch that movie after all.” 

Matt smiled at him, but his heart clearly wasn’t in it. “Sure,” he said, “but we ought to prioritize switching back. If this was a deliberate attack, maybe the timing was deliberate, too—the Hand could be planning something they don’t want us interfering in.” 

That was a sobering thought. Whenever the Hand planned something, it never seemed to turn out very well for any of them. “We can go after the couriers again,” Claire said, keeping her voice determined and certain. “Misty’s on the lookout for them, and I guess she has some fans on the force who are gonna keep an eye out, too.” 

Jessica grimaced, and Colleen frowned at her. “What?” 

“I had an idea,” she said, “but I don’t like it.” 

“What’s your idea?” Luke asked. 

“Well, if I’m gonna be in your body for however the hell long…I should probably tell Trish. And as long as I’m telling Trish...well, you know, she has her rabid radio fans. Maybe one of them’ll call in and tell her he found some Hand courier.” 

“And maybe they’ll call in and tell her he found some blind guy he _thought_ was a Hand courier,” Matt pointed out, and Jessica shrugged with a scowl. 

“Whatever. It was just an idea.” 

Claire shot Matt a glare and said to Jessica, “It was a good one. Obviously Trish should be careful about what she says, but one more person looking for information can’t hurt here.” 

“I wasn’t saying it was a bad idea,” Matt protested, but before he could say anything more, Danny choked on his juice. 

“You okay?” Colleen asked. 

Danny nodded. “Sorry, just went down the wrong pipe, I guess.” 

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Great. Okay, so unless anyone else has any bright ideas, I’m heading over to Trish’s place.” 

“You want me to come?” At this, Jessica raised an eyebrow at Matt, and he gave her an apologetic smile. “I don’t know, object proof that Luke’s not just playing a trick on her?” 

Jessica considered this for a moment and then nodded slightly. “Sure, whatever.” 

“So, wait, what’s our plan?” Colleen demanded. “We just…sit around and wait for Trish Walker or Misty Knight to call us and tell us when they’ve found a Hand courier?” 

It really was too bad, Claire reflected, that this was a problem violence wouldn’t solve. Because if it were, Colleen Wing and her katana would already have solved it. “You guys,” said Claire, “I know it’s not ideal, but I don’t see any reason to rush into anything here. The more information we have, the better, and it could very well be that getting into it with MacCready yesterday is gonna make the rest of his little buddies lay low. Maybe…maybe the best thing to do now is for you all to be able to fight a little in the bodies you’re in now, so that if we do have to fight the Hand or get information out of them, it’s not like the Three Stooges getting into a pie fight.” That, at least, might get their minds off the current weirdness for a while. 

“Seriously?” Foggy asked, eyes wide and skeptical. “That’s your plan? The training montage from _Rocky_?” 

“You have a Freaky Friday magic wand in your pocket?” she asked, irritated. When he shook his head, she said, “Then I say we all chill out and figure out what we’re doing.” 

Colleen gave Danny an assessing look, which then firmed. “All right,” she said. “I already canceled my Sunday classes—we can do some meditation and warm-ups.” To Luke, she said, “You might want to come, too. I don’t know if you’ll be able to channel the Iron Fist or not, but it’s worth a shot, right?” 

Under other circumstances, Claire would have laughed at the look of polite desperation on Luke’s face. “Uh. Yeah, I guess.”

Danny, who’d started curling into himself under the pressure of what Claire imagined was a shitload of noise, perked up. “Oh. Oh, hey, it’ll be fun, man. We can do some tai chi, it’ll relieve your stress.” 

Jessica and Luke shared a look, and this time Claire really couldn’t help herself from letting out a laugh. To cover it, she cleared her throat and said, “That’s a good idea, Danny.” And it was, Claire realized, the humor fading rapidly. If it came down to a fight between them and the Hand again, well…Luke wouldn’t have his bulletproof skin this time. Danny gave her a concerned look—damn it, wasn’t taking him long to pick up on whatever cues Matt used to read emotions, and she said, “Hey, why don’t I come along with Matt and you, Jessica? I could help you guys brainstorm about what to say on her show.” 

“Jesus,” said Jessica, exasperated, “you want to come too, Nelson? Since apparently the whole goddamned neighborhood is coming with me?” 

Foggy looked from Jessica to Matt and back again. “Uh, sure,” he said. 

Foggy could be a regular chatterbox once you got him started, which Claire might have thought would get on Jessica’s nerves, but they actually fell into a conversation as they walked to Trish’s apartment about, of all things, hot sauce brands. Matt fell back to walk next to Claire. 

“Hey,” he said. 

“Hey,” Claire said back. “How you holding up?” 

“Eh,” he said noncommittally. “Doing all right, I think.” 

“Noticed you went without the cane today.” 

“Yeah, well. Didn’t want to…use it as a crutch, I suppose.” His polite smile went a little uncomfortable, but it warmed as he turned back to Claire. “Hey, what color is your shirt?” 

Claire looked down. “Uh, teal. Or maybe turquoise, I can’t remember what the difference is supposed to be.” 

“Teal or turquoise,” Matt repeated to himself. “I like it. Very…vibrant.” 

“Is that a polite way of saying my shirt’s tacky?” Claire asked, and she was pleased when he laughed. 

“No, not at all. I always imagined teal and turquoise being more green, or maybe kind of cold—you know, like turquoise the stone—but it actually seems very cheerful. It’s a very cheerful color.” He kept smiling as they walked for a few minutes, and then he darted her a sideways look. “Hey, Claire?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Are you happy?” 

She blinked at the unexpected question. “Well, I’d prefer not to be on my way to tell Trish Walker her sister’s in my boyfriend’s body, if that’s what you mean.” 

He grinned briefly at her and said, “No, no, I mean generally. You and I haven’t really…talked, in a while, about things that aren’t my health or to do with my…extracurricular activities, and I know that’s largely my fault, but I just wanted to…check. That things were going well with you, magical body switching aside.” 

Claire blinked again, this time with sudden and unwanted emotion. That was a can of worms she had no desire or time to open. “Things are going fine, Matt,” she said carefully, not wanting to rush her answer. “Luke and I are really happy, and I’m working on opening my own community nursing clinic in Harlem—you know, when I’m not doing this superhero shit. I feel…like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. So yeah, to answer your question, I’d say I’m doing really well.” It was true, she realized, even if she never really took the time to think about it. And if Claire of two years ago would have thought she was nuts, well, Claire of two years ago could just take a seat. 

“Good,” said Matt firmly. “’I’m happy for you. You deserve it.” 

She smiled at him, hoping he wasn’t good enough at reading facial expressions to see any awkwardness there. “Thanks,” she said sincerely. “And you’re doing okay?” 

“Magical body switching aside, you mean?” He laughed. “Yeah. I mean, it would certainly be nice to be back to 100% physically—or, you know, in my own body at all—but I’m lucky. Not a lot of people get to essentially _die_ and come back to get a second shot at life. Plus, as you said, I think I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. And it’s nice not to have to do it alone.” 

“Good for you, man,” said Claire. “Seriously, Matt.” 

He quirked another half-smile at her. 

By that point, they’d reached Trish Walker’s apartment complex, and Jessica gestured toward the buzzer. “You do the honors, Lucifer,” she said. “If I say I’m Jessica, she’s gonna call the cops.” 

“You didn’t call ahead?” Matt asked. At Jessica’s look, he nodded. “Right, okay, buzzing.” 

Claire wished she’d thought to ask about calling ahead—it would just figure, the luck they’d been having over the last couple of days, that Trish would be out—but a few seconds after Matt pressed the button, a crackling voice asked, “Hello?” 

“Uh, hi, Trish. It’s…Jessica? With Matt, Foggy, and Claire.” 

“O…kay,” said Trish, with a laugh in her voice, and Jessica punched Matt in the shoulder. 

“Jesus, could you sound less like me?” 

“I could do my Sean Connery impression,” said Matt, unfazed. 

“Jess, you okay down there?” asked Trish, the amusement gone. 

Matt leaned in. “Fine,” he said. “But, ah. Something weird has happened. Can you let us up?” 

There was no answer for a long time, and Claire wondered if they were going to have the cops called on them. But after a minute, the front door buzzed open, and they crowded in. The doorman at the desk gave them suspicious looks, but he at least seemed to recognize Matt and buzzed them through to the elevator. 

Trish answered the door with an expression that was half laughter, half suspicion. “Hey,” she said, “so what’s this weird thing that happened?” 

Jessica didn’t mince words. “I’m Jessica, okay, and the one who looks like me is Murdock—some weird magical ninja shit. We’re trying to work it out.” 

To Trish’s credit, she took it in stride, blinking a few times before saying, “Uh-huh. Sit down, all of you. I want the whole story.” 

Jessica and Matt took turns telling the story, starting with their surveillance of the Hand and ending with their failed attempt to try to switch themselves back. Claire occasionally had a detail to add, and Foggy made an interjection or two. When they were done, Trish leaned back in her chair and said, “So, it sounds like, unless something changes, you’re probably going to need Madame Gao or another high-up Hand person to change you back.” 

“That…appears to be long and short of it,” Matt admitted. Trish nodded. 

“Okay. I’ll put some feelers out on my show. We get a lot of crackpots, but there’s actually some really observant Trish Talk fans whose calls don’t always make it on the air because of sensitive material. If these Hand couriers have been around as long as you say they have been, and they’re recruiting again, somebody has to have noticed.” She turned to Jessica. “Jess, are you okay?” 

Jessica shrugged. “I’ve been better. But it’s not like—I mean, if I had to be one of those chuckleheads, I guess I’m glad it’s Luke. And Murdock’s taking good care of my body. If he knows what’s good for him.” 

“I think some might dispute that last point,” said Matt. “But yes. I’m trying to be a good houseguest, as it were.” 

“I’m sure,” Trish said. “Out of curiosity, what shampoo do you use?” 

Matt frowned, and Jessica groaned. “ _Trish_.” 

“It’s a fragrance-free—or, rather, lower-fragrance—shampoo I order in bulk on the internet,” said Matt. “Why?” 

“It looks nice,” said Trish, “but you might want to try conditioner. And your face looks kind of washed out.” 

“ _Trish_ ,” Jessica snapped, “if _I_ don’t want your makeup tips, what makes you think Murdock does?” 

“Have you talked to Malcolm in the last couple of days?” Trish asked without answering the question. “Because he called me wondering what the hell Luke Cage was doing staying in your apartment, where the hell you were staying, and why you were dressed so weird.” 

Matt looked down at himself. He was wearing a button-up shirt and slacks that Claire couldn’t imagine Jessica Jones wore unless she was applying for a loan at the bank. Jessica had brought them over, so they must have come from her closet, but it really was much more of a ‘Matt Murdock as a woman’ outfit than a Jessica Jones outfit. “Oh,” he said. “You’re right, I don’t make a very good Jessica.” 

“That’s not even my point, Matt,” said Trish matter-of-factly. “My point is, if you don’t want the people you know to be suspicious, _Jessica_ , you might want to give them a heads-up about what’s going on.” 

“Oh, hey,” said Foggy, “that sounds familiar.” He fixed Matt with a weighty stare. 

Jessica sighed. “Okay, whatever, I’ll call Malcolm.” She started to stand up, but Trish grabbed her arm. 

“No,” she said. “You stay. Matt, Foggy, I want you to go over to Jess’s place and tell Malcolm she—you, Matt—will call him later, but that she’s staying with me for a couple of days. He can tell any clients who contact the office that she’s working on their cases and will get in touch with them when she has any information. Then, Matt, you should grab her conditioner and a lipstick or two out of her drawer and—Jess, is there anything you want them to bring over?” 

“Jesus, Trish,” said Jessica, rolling her eyes. Claire wasn’t sure she’d take Trish’s bossing around without a protest, but she made a face and said, “Fuck, I don’t know, maybe the case files on my office desk? If I can’t figure out how to get my own body back, maybe I can figure out whether June Cleaver’s husband is cheating on her.” 

Matt and Foggy both looked rather taken aback at being volunteered for delivery and messenger services, but Matt recovered quickly. “Sure,” he said. 

“Be a convincing me when you’re explaining shit to Malcolm,” said Jessica. “I’ll tell him what’s going on later.” 

“The song of your people,” Foggy muttered to Matt, pulling his coat off the back of his chair, and with a few goodbyes the two of them took off. 

As soon as they were gone, Trish reached out a hand to grasp Jessica’s. “Seriously, Jessica,” she said. “Are you okay? I can’t even imagine what it’s like to just wake up in some guy’s body and have no idea how to get out of it.” 

“Luke’s not just some guy,” said Jessica, darting a quick look at Claire before fixing her eyes on her and Trish’s joined hands. “Seriously, Trish, it’s…it’s not fine, okay, it’s fucking weird as shit, but I’m literally bulletproof right now, so that’s cool.” 

“Never a dull moment with you superheroes,” Trish said, shaking her head. “You want a drink?” 

“You don’t even know how much,” Jessica said. “Maybe a small one?” 

Trish nodded and stood up. “You got it. I’m making you an old-fashioned. Claire?” 

It was still before noon. “You have any soda?” 

“Diet Coke okay?” 

Claire smiled at her. “That’d be great, thank you.” As Trish went over her shiny, stainless steel refrigerator, Claire looked at Jessica’s hand, still tapping anxiously on the table. Claire was probably taking her own life in her hands asking about Jessica’s welfare for the third time in the span of maybe five minutes, but there was something genuinely haunted in Jessica’s eyes that unsettled her. “You okay?” she asked, soft enough that she thought maybe Trish wouldn’t be able to hear. 

Jessica narrowed her eyes at her. “Why does everyone keep asking that? It’s cool. Just another crazy day in the life of a bunch of morons too stupid to mind their own business.” 

“Okay,” said Claire. If Jessica didn’t want to talk about what was bothering her, Claire wasn’t going to push. It wasn’t like she could do much to help at this point. 

They sat for a minute listening to Trish muddling a sugar cube and dropping ice in a glass, and then, out of nowhere, Jessica said, “It’s a weird way to be close to someone, is all.” 

“What?” 

Jessica looked away. “Forget it. Forget I said anything.” _Oh,_ thought Claire. _Luke._

Jesus Christ. They were such a weird, incestuous bunch of fucked-up people. Maybe Claire should have been jealous, but she wasn’t—just sympathetic and mourning the certainty and contentedness she’d felt only a short while ago talking about her life with Matt. She didn’t know what it would be like to be Jessica, to have gone through what Jessica had, to be in the body of someone she cared about but had a hard time talking to. Claire’s own life had been a different flavor of weird, and even if she’d had the same set of strange and terrible experiences Jessica had, she didn’t think it would make it easier to know what to say now. 

So she didn’t say anything. She sat and waited for her drink. 

** 

“Okay,” said Danny, “so the idea here is to find balance in your qi. To have it move smoothly throughout your body.” 

Luke looked extremely dubious. “I get the general principle,” he said. “But how do I know if it’s doing that?” 

“For starters,” said Colleen, “you need to stop thinking so much about how you look doing these poses. Bend your knees a little more.” 

Luke complied, giving Colleen an amused glance. “You this hard on your regular students?” 

“Only the beginners I’m giving a crash course to so they can channel the power of the heart of a dragon.” He had a point, though, and she smiled at him. “You wanna take a break?” 

“Nah.” He turned and did a shaky but passable version of Part the Wild Horse’s Mane on his left side. “It’s weird—I genuinely don’t know how to do any of this stuff, but it kind of feels familiar when I’m actually doing it.” 

“Muscle memory,” Danny suggested, and Luke nodded. 

“Yeah. I guess there is such a thing as kinetic intelligence—maybe that sticks around even if the person in the body is different.” 

“I did some of those poses so many times when I was a kid,” said Danny, reminiscing, “I could literally do some of them asleep.” He laughed. “I think I did. We used to have really early morning practices, when it was still dark out, and I’d go through the whole routine without actually waking up.” 

Luke gave Danny a curious smile, like he wasn’t sure whether to be amused or not. “You did a _lot_ of martial arts, huh?” 

“It’s the only way to get really good at them,” Colleen answered, going through the beginning part of the competition wushu form she’d worked on as a kid, before going to live with her grandfather. She’d been mostly into Japanese martial arts since the Hand had taken her in, but she was starting to take pleasure in some of the forms from her childhood again, and forms she’d learned in the kickboxing class she’d taken and forms she picked up by watching YouTube videos. Danny mostly did kung fu, and Matt did some weird, mostly self-taught MMA style, and working with both of them made everything seem fresh to Colleen. Having friends who knew her outside of the Hand made her dojo feel like it could be part of her future, not just the past. 

That was when they were in their own bodies, though. Not when Danny was in Matt’s body and Luke in Danny’s. “If we find Gao,” she said, “how do you think we can make her switch you back?” 

Danny and Luke startled, and Colleen couldn’t blame them. Luke’s eyebrows drew together in an expression she knew so well on Danny’s face, and he said, “Make it worth her while, I guess.” 

“I’m not letting her deal drugs out of Rand again,” Danny said immediately, and Luke sighed. 

“Not saying you should. And trust me, I don’t like the idea any more than you do. But we’re dealing with something here pretty far outside any of our wheelhouses. And from what you’ve told me about this Gao woman, and what I’ve seen myself, I’m pretty sure we’re not gonna be able to _make_ her do anything she doesn’t want to.” 

Colleen frowned. She didn’t like the idea of Gao having any power over her. “Maybe we could still change you back on our own,” she said. 

“Yeah, maybe,” said Luke. His voice was sincere, but Colleen didn’t think he was very hopeful. “But if we can’t….” He twisted his head around to look at Danny, who was sitting in lotus pose now. “No offense, Danny,” he said, “but I’d really rather not be you forever. And if it’s a choice between throwing Gao some kind of bone—even if it’s just giving her a head start before we go after her drug runners again—and staying in your body forever, I think I’m going for option A.” 

Danny frowned. “It doesn’t seem honorable,” he said. He pulled out of lotus and stretched one leg behind him in a lunge. “But…I don’t know. I know I’m not letting her get a toehold in my family’s company again. It was too much heartache to get her out in the first place. But I’m also not sure we’re in a position to take her on in combat. Colleen? What do you think?” 

“The Hand is weakened,” Colleen offered. 

“Yeah,” said Danny with a nod. “But we are, too.” 

They all contemplated that in gloomy silence for a moment, and then Luke said, “Hey, it’s all hypothetical anyway. We don’t even know if we’re going to be able to find this woman.” Closing his eyes, he spread his arms into what could maybe be considered White Crane Spreads Its Wings. 

“Hey,” said Colleen, “move your legs a little farther apart, your balance looks off.” 

Luke burst into a fit of coughing and hunched over. “Ugh. Man.” 

“Take a break,” said Danny, holding out a bottle of water to him. 

Luke nodded and took the water. “Thanks, man.” He settled down next to Danny on the floor and drained the bottle. “Wow,” he said. “Considering how slow all those moves are, you wouldn’t think I’d be this tuckered out.” 

“You’re doing a lot of movements you’re not used to,” Colleen said, trying not to be too disappointed. She hadn’t really thought she was going to get Luke using the Iron Fist today anyway. It was a nice thought, though. “Even with Danny’s muscle memory, it’s got to be a little strange.” 

“Plus,” Danny put in, “I don’t think qi flows as well in a strange body.” He turned his face up to Colleen. “I tried to summon the Iron Fist this morning,” he told her. “It was quiet—well, no, it wasn’t quiet, but it was quieter, and I was feeling pretty well-rested, but when I tried to summon my qi, it just….” He shook his head. “Matt’s paths are different. He connects to the world differently. And my qi just doesn’t flow the way it needs to in his body.” 

“I don’t know whether that’s a metaphor or not,” said Luke, “but yeah, I think we’ve pretty conclusively proven that I can’t make my…qi do whatever it is you have to do to summon the Fist.” He set the water bottle down beside him and tilted his head back, rolling his head around and cracking his neck. 

Danny winced. “Man. I can’t even believe how loud that is, it sounds like you’re breaking my spine over there.” 

“Nah,” said Luke. “Just working out some of the kinks.” He looked at Danny, and then at Colleen. “You guys,” he said, “I get the point of trying to teach me this stuff. It was a good idea. But I think…I might be better off figuring out how to do things I already know how to do in this body. Do you have a punching bag or anything?” 

Colleen would be lying if she said she didn’t feel a little bit like a failure, but then, nobody could teach a complete novice perfect form in one day. Even if the circumstances were a little unusual. “I have a punching _dummy_ ,” she said. She was proud of how long she’d maintained this one without breaking it. “Will that do?” 

“Sure,” said Luke. He smiled at her, just a little hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “Hey, Colleen,” he asked, “You ever do any American-style boxing?” 

Colleen could recognize a challenge when it was offered to her. “Not much,” she said. 

Another martial art for her collection. It didn’t solve their dilemma, but at least Colleen would feel a little more in control for a while. 

That sense of power lasted for maybe a day, until it began to sink in how slow forensic testing could go, how many crankpots called in to Trish Walker’s show, how much else the NYPD had on their plate. How little their training was really accomplishing. How fast the Hand’s couriers could go underground, how much waiting was involved. 

So they waited. Going on five days now, they waited. Luke called in for Danny to make sure no meetings were scheduled; Matt talked Danny though a phone call telling his clients he had the flu; Jessica had a long conversation with Trish and Malcolm from which she emerged irritated but with no clients or other meetings to worry about for the next week; Claire sat down with Bobby Fish to explain in extremely doctored terms what was going on and why Luke wouldn’t be around for a few days. Colleen dug up her courage and ran down some of her former students, but even the ones who would talk to her had been cut off from the Hand cleanly and had nothing to tell her. She ran her classes, because it was something to do and because it bugged her to live off Danny’s money, but she was distracted, which was another thing that bugged her. She hated feeling that her students weren’t getting her best. 

She didn’t have a lot to give right now, though. Danny wasn’t sleeping, and when he did manage to doze off, more often than not someone slamming a car door down the street or a drunk laughing in an alleyway would wake him up. Sometimes, he’d wake up coughing, like he was choking in his sleep. Once, he woke and immediately wanted to rush outside, despite the fact that he’d forgotten to pick up his cane and tripped twice getting from the bed to the bathroom. Once Colleen managed to calm him down enough to talk coherently, he told her there was a mugging in progress two blocks away. Colleen rushed out to stop it, but the mugger had already gone, so she called the police and she and Danny sat with the victim, an older man from Iowa visiting his daughter, until the cops came. 

Colleen felt like a stretched-out rubber band, full of energy she couldn’t use and ready to snap. Because there was nothing she could do. Nothing to put Danny back in his own body, nothing to fight the Hand, nothing to right a world that, once again, had tilted on its axis. 

But she and the others still met daily to update each other, to wait for news from Claire’s friend at the state forensics lab, and to be with other people who understood what all of them were going through. 

“No, I—I get it. I know, I know, it’s a busy time, and I appreciate you doing this for me. No, yeah, give me a call later.”

Though Claire’s voice was deliberately light, Colleen could hear the undertone of frustration. It sounded just like Colleen felt—like something about to explode.

After another few tense exchanges, Claire hung up the phone. “So, yeah, Heather says they’ve been swamped, but she might have some free time later today or tomorrow to get to the samples.” 

Trish Walker frowned. “You’ve told her how important this is?” 

“It’s the state crime lab,” said Claire with a shrug. “They’re dealing with mass murders and kidnapped kids. It’s all important, and it’s not like I could tell her about all the mystical crap. She’s doing me a favor, I didn’t want to push.” 

Jessica groaned. “Great. At this rate, my body’s gonna go into menopause without me.” 

“Can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to it,” said Matt flatly. 

“Come on, guys,” Luke said, “maybe we missed something. Something we can use to get our heads around this while we’re waiting for the results.” 

“We’ve been _over_ it a thousand times,” Jessica said, drumming her fingers on Claire’s table impatiently. “We've even acted it out. We show up. Guy vanishes into basement. Power surge, dust blows, serial killer basement, yada yada. We go home and five hours later we’re playing musical bodies.” She pushed her chair away from the table. “I can’t do this. I can’t spend another day sitting here going over the same five minutes until I can play the whole thing in my head like a movie. I gotta, I don’t know, take a walk or something.” 

“You want someone to come with you?” asked Luke, pushing his own chair back. 

She waved him off with a flap of a hand. “No, it—sorry, I just have to go be an asshole by myself for a while.” 

“If you’re not back in half an hour,” Trish said, “I’m going out to be an asshole with you.” 

Jessica looked at Trish with soft eyes, but only said, “Whatever,” and stomped out. 

Danny lay his head down on the table and groaned. “Matt. No offense, but I’m gonna die if I have to be you for too much longer.” 

Foggy Nelson frowned at him, but Matt smiled wryly and said, “None taken. God knows I’m not having the time of my life here, either.” 

“Really?” Danny asked, lifting his head. Luke groaned and poked him in the shoulder. 

“Are you kidding me right now, man?” 

Danny frowned. “No, not—just, Jessica’s so _strong._ ” 

Trish smiled sadly. “True. I used to wish I was that strong all the time when I was a kid.” 

“She is,” said Matt, “and it’s definitely pretty cool, but….” He sighed. “Don’t get me wrong, I know things could be a lot worse. There are just…a lot of things I miss about being me.” 

“Guy things?” asked Luke delicately. 

“There is that,” said Matt. “I’m definitely pretty used to my body being a lot more…masculine than it is right now. No offense,” he said, turning to Trish, Colleen, and Claire in turn. 

Claire snorted. “None taken.” 

“I’m not surprised you’re feeling dysphoric,” Trish said matter-of-factly. “It’s been really weird for Jess, too.” 

“Yeah,” Matt said softly. “But it’s also…I don’t know. The taste of food. People’s heartbeats. Their warmth. I know it’s just a matter of perspective, what you’re used to and not, but everything seems a bit dull and superficial to me.” He shrugged. “Like I said, I know it isn’t like that for you. But I feel like there’s a distance between me and the world that wasn’t there before.” 

Luke nodded slowly. “Can’t say I understand, exactly, but I’m definitely feeling a little distance right now. I’ve had a couple people call me ‘Mr. Rand’ on the streets and it’s a strange feeling when I realize they’re talking to me. Like I’m playing a part. This whole week, it’s like I’m living a fake life.” 

Me, too, Colleen wanted to say. This wasn’t what her life was supposed to be. Danny was supposed to be her constant. The Hand was supposed to be gone. She wasn’t supposed to be having bad dreams again. 

But ‘supposed to’ didn’t mean anything. They had to deal with what was, not what was supposed to be. 

The teapot whistled, and Danny winced, laying his head back down on the table and covering his ears. Claire rushed up to turn off the stove and bring the pot in. They’d dug into her collection of herbal teas, and Colleen had a mug with a teabag full of chamomile in front of her. A little relaxation would be helpful about now. 

Claire poured hot water for them all, then propped herself against the counter. “I go back and forth on whether I think it was an attack or not,” she said, as if that was what they’d been talking about this whole time and she was just picking up where she left off. 

“What else do you think it could be?” asked Luke with a frown, and she puffed her cheeks with air and blew it out slowly. 

“An experiment, maybe?” she suggested. “I mean, part of their whole thing was immortality, right?” 

“And how’d that work out for them?” Colleen muttered bitterly. 

Claire pushed herself up off the counter to look out the window. “That’s just it,” she said. “It didn’t. We killed the leaders and the…the dragon bone, or whatever it was, got buried with Midland Circle.” 

“And Matt,” said Foggy. Matt looked at him but didn’t say anything, and Colleen wondered if this was something they still argued over. 

Claire nodded in acknowledgment but kept going. “So let’s say, for the sake of argument, Madame Gao gets out. Plus side, we think she’s dead, and we took out rival factions of the Hand for her; downside, she still doesn’t have her magical immortality bone juice or whatever.” 

“So she looks for a substitute,” said Trish, nodding. Colleen took a sip of her tea and set it down again. Maybe she didn’t want to relax after all. 

Claire snapped her fingers and pointed at Trish. “Exactly. The powder, the goo, the blood…what if all of it is just an attempt to recreate their source of immortality?” 

“Immortality through body-switching?” asked Luke skeptically. 

“Why not?” Claire shrugged. “Instead of keeping the same body alive forever, you just keep stealing other people’s bodies.” 

It would sure be consistent with the Hand’s history of using people and then throwing them away, thought Colleen. 

Matt rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. So they can promise immortality to recruits again—that would explain at least some of the current uptick in Hand couriers.” 

“ _And,_ ” said Trish, her eyes lighting up. “ _And._ You guys mentioned a power surge, right? A kind of buzz in the ground and the fan turned on, but then it didn’t work when you threw the breakers?”

“Yeah?” said Danny.

“Maybe it wasn’t static.” Trish set her mug down on the table firmly. “We still don’t know how the Hand caused the earthquake, but the timeline lines up with it happening around the time they brought Elektra Natchios back from the dead. Maybe whatever kind of energy went into that process, that’s what you felt the night you switched bodies.” 

“Question,” Foggy put in. “If the idea is to make the _Hand_ guys immortal by body-switching, why do it on you guys? Seems like that would be the kind of thing you wouldn’t do by accident, especially if their main source of immortality juice or whatever got destroyed.” 

Matt looked at Claire and smiled. “Like she said. Experiment. If you don’t know whether it’s gonna work or not, and the process might harm you, why not try it out on some old enemies?” 

Colleen had listened intently to the conversation, feeling a thrill rise in her chest. But now, she had to wonder, “So…does this help us switch them back?” 

Everyone fell silent for a moment, a pall cast over the room. Colleen felt guilty for spoiling the mood, but she couldn’t help but feel that, practically speaking, they were in the same place they’d been before. Finally, Danny said, “Hey, that makes a lot of sense, but I have another question.” 

“Yeah?” asked Claire. 

“Why’d we switch with who we switched with? I mean, why did I become Matt and not Jessica? Why did Luke become me and not Matt? Just…do you think it was random, or that the Hand did it that way on purpose?” 

“Huh,” Luke said. “Good question.” 

Matt nodded. “Yeah…yeah, that’s worth knowing. If we’re ever going to undo this process, we need to make sure we know the mechanism that decides which body the soul’s going into.” 

“It’d be kind of ironic if you figured out how to switch back and you just ended up in a different wrong person’s body,” Foggy commented. 

Matt raised an eyebrow at him and looked like he wanted to say something, but just then, Claire’s phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket and looked at the screen. “Oh, hey, it’s Heather again. I better get this.” She put the phone to her ear and vanished into the bedroom. 

Just as she closed the bedroom door, the front door opened. “Hey,” said Jessica. 

“Hey,” Trish said. “We think we know what the Hand was trying to do when they switched you guys around.” 

“Yeah?” Jessica closed her eyes and rubbed on her chest, looking like she was trying to swallow or something. “Can I get a glass of water or something?” 

Luke sprang to his feet and grabbed a glass out of Claire’s cupboard, filling it in the sink. “You feeling all right?” 

“Tickle in my throat,” said Jessica dismissively. She took the glass of water from Luke with a brief “Thanks” and sipped deeply from it. 

“Something’s got to be going around,” Luke said. “I’ve had a cough this week, too.”

“Likewise,” said Matt. 

A moment later, Jessica coughed loudly, the sound coming from deep in her chest. 

“Why don’t you slow down?” said Foggy. “You’re gonna choke on it.” 

Jessica glared at him but couldn’t say anything, she was coughing so hard. 

“Jesus,” said Matt, and he cleared his throat. 

“God, Jessica, are you okay?” Trish stepped close, standing on her tip-toes to wrap an arm around Jessica’s shoulders. For a moment, Colleen could see their heads close together, Trish’s blond one near Jessica’s shoulder and Jessica’s—Luke’s—bowed over the hand she was holding to her mouth, and then Trish jerked away. “Oh, God,” she said, and the dread in her voice made Colleen’s blood freeze. 

Jessica gingerly held up her hand to her face. It was covered with something thick and black. “Holy fuck,” she said, looking at it with wide, terrified eyes. 

Matt cleared his throat again, and then, to Colleen’s horror, Danny started coughing. She recognized the sound from her recent late and sleepless nights, but this sounded worse than usual. Deeper.

“Hey,” Claire said, walking back into the room. “I guess our last conversation must have sparked one of Heather’s coworkers’ curiosity, because apparently the guy did a rush on our samples and just told Heather about it. The blood’s just blood, like we thought—they’re still running DNA tests to find out whose it is, but the powder is—get this—ground up quartz, jade, and some kind of bone Heather’s coworker couldn’t even _identify_. I bet that's the dragon.” 

Colleen barely heard her. “Claire,” she said. “We have a problem.” 

** 

The coughing was intermittent, but painful, and within twenty-four hours, all four of them were producing the black gunk. As the night and the following day went on, they also started running a fever. In her years of being a nurse, Claire had never seen anything quite like it. The gunk was nothing like the mucus a productive cough might normally result in, and it wasn’t bloody, either—in fact, it was weirdly similar to the stuff they’d found in the basement, down to the grainy texture. 

“It’s gotta be something from that goddamned house,” Jessica said between coughs. She’d stayed the night in Danny Rand’s seldom-occupied townhouse. They all had, so that Claire could keep an eye on them. “Something toxic in that shit they dumped on us. Tell your friend to wear a gas mask or something, Claire.” 

“If it’s toxic,” said Danny, reaching desperately for Colleen’s hand, “Colleen was exposed, too.” To Colleen, he said, “Do you feel okay?” 

Colleen, who was rubbing Danny’s back, looked up and met Claire’s eyes. She didn’t look sick, Claire thought, but she did look like someone who was being pushed past the bounds of her endurance. “I feel fine,” she said. “Could be a side effect of the body-switching.” 

“Great,” said Luke, who had folded his arms on the table and was resting his head on them. “As if we weren’t all having enough fun.” 

Matt groaned. “If it’s a side effect of the body-switching,” he mumbled into his hands as he rubbed them on his face, “it might not go away even if we get back into our own bodies. Assuming we ever do.” 

“Hey, gloomy pants, you _will_ get back into your own body,” Foggy said insistently. “Don’t start getting pessimistic on me.” He shoved a glass of water into Matt’s hands, and he took it with a mournful expression, staring sadly at Foggy. Foggy, meanwhile, squeezed Matt’s shoulder and looked imploringly at Claire. _What can we do?_ the look said. _How do we help them?_

“This is _bullshit_ ,” said Trish. “The cops, the crime lab, all of us working together, and we’ve got _nothing._ ” 

Claire swallowed. The adrenaline of yet another shock left a sour taste in her mouth. “We don’t have nothing,” she said. “Danny’s still got a private hospital. If we can’t get them stabilized, that’s always an option. And we know who caused it, and maybe even how, a little bit.” 

Trish shook her head. “Not enough,” she said sharply. “Not enough to _do_ anything about this.” 

“New plan.” Colleen shot up, her face hardening into a grim expression. “I’m not wasting any more time figuring out how to fix this. Madame Gao did it. She can fix it.” 

Jessica looked up at her, her eyes bloodshot. “And you’re going to find her…how?” 

Colleen’s eyes went to her katana in the corner of the room. “Oh, I’ll find a way.” 

God help her, Claire hoped she did. 

** 

Joe MacCready might have been lying low, but he still came back to his apartment sometimes for clothes and things. It was amazing how helpful the guy across the hall from him could be when you phrased your question just right and, as it turned out, Joe himself could be fairly helpful with a katana to his throat. 

“Tell Madame Gao,” she said, “that if you and your asshole crew don’t put my friends back in their own bodies, I’m breaking her jars of blood. I’m flushing that gooey shit you guys made down the toilet. And then I’m burning the house down.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said MacCready, and Colleen pressed her katana just a little more closely against his neck. 

“Yeah, you do,” she said. “And if you think I won’t do it, you should know that it was my idea to blow the building at Midland Circle. Compared to the shitshow that was, burning down your little lab and all your stupid dust will be a piece of cake.” 

Maybe MacCready couldn’t see her face, but she could tell by looking at his that she’d got him. “You’re ruining _everything_ ,” he said in a quavering, hate-filled voice. 

“You bet your ass I am.” She reached down and dug around in his jeans pocket for his phone, then put it in his hand. “Call Gao.” 

“She won’t give in to you,” said MacCready spitefully. “The Hand’s millennia old. We know secrets you can only dream of. You think she’s going to give in to a group of—of traitors and freaks?” 

“Yeah,” said Colleen grimly. “I think she will.” 

She waited until he’d put in a call to Gao, a fearful, apologetic call that left Colleen feeling not even remotely sympathetic, and then she shoved him into Claire’s uncle’s car. 

“Hi again,” said Claire once Colleen had him subdued in the back seat. 

“ _You_ ,” said MacCready, his voice trembling with rage. 

“Me,” Claire agreed. “Where to, Joe?” 

He tucked his chin into his chest, looking like a sullen child. “She said you would know where to meet.” 

“151st and Amsterdam it is,” said Claire, shifting the gear into drive again. 

Colleen called Trish, who was still hanging out at Claire’s place with the rest of them, and by the time Colleen and Claire arrived with their new friend, Trish and Foggy were already there with two cars full of sick superheroes. 

“This him?” asked Trish with a cold glare at MacCready. 

Colleen pulled him out of the car by the collar of his shirt. “In all his weaselly glory.” 

Foggy peered at him uncomfortably. “What are we supposed to do with him until…whoever’s gonna show up shows up?” 

Colleen would have been okay with rubbing his face into the gunk Danny was coughing up, let him hear and smell what he had done to Colleen’s friends even if he couldn’t see it. But it wasn’t a call they had to make. The door to the building opened and there, looking absurdly small and put-together, was Madame Gao. 

“Let him come to me,” she said. “Surely you realize you cannot hold him captive, and the police have nothing to charge him with.” 

They’ll charge him with murder if my friends die, Colleen thought of saying, but watching as Danny, Luke, Jessica, and Matt pulled themselves out of the cars and onto their feet, she found she couldn’t say that, couldn’t even hint that this would end in death. So instead she said, “You gonna fix what you did to them?” 

“What I _did_ to them?” asked Gao, her eyebrows raised. “They should be thankful.” 

“ _Thankful_?” Jessica spat. “I’ll show you _thankful_ , you evil fucking—” Whatever she was going to say was lost in the fit of coughing that followed. 

Gao fixed her with a chiding look. “So rude to interrupt. And so ungrateful. Always so limited in your perspectives, all of you. Good, evil—you talk about them like you are some kind of experts. Have you not learned from this experience? So few people will ever understand what it is to look at the world through another’s eyes. They will never live long enough to experience another’s perspective. But you—you’ve been given a chance.” 

Matt cleared his throat. “Don’t act like this is some gift,” he said hoarsely. “You did this for yourself.” 

“You’re after the same thing you’re always after,” Danny added. “Stealing life.” 

“Doesn’t matter who you have to hurt to do it,” Luke managed before erupting into another bought of coughing. 

“I didn’t tell them anything,” MacCready put in, pleading. “Forgive me.” 

Madame Gao smiled benevolently. “There is nothing to forgive. You have been a loyal servant of the Hand. To be beaten by a formidable enemy is no shame.” 

Colleen snorted. Calling them a formidable enemy might have been Gao’s effort at a compliment, but Colleen was past the point where she could be manipulated by the Hand’s flattery. “The shame is yours, not his, Gao,” she said. “As usual, you’re dragging others into your battle.” 

“Says the woman who comes to fight eight against two. Hardly an honorable fight.” 

“Wow,” said Foggy. “I never thought I’d say this to anyone, but it’s kind of too bad you didn’t get crushed under that building.” 

Gao’s gaze shifted to him. “And if I had, who would put your friend’s spirits back into their proper bodies?” Her smile took on a cruel edge. “You may have noticed, as we have, that a spirit does not sit easy in another’s body. The body rejects it, as it would a foreign organ. We’re working on a solution, but alas, so many of our brightest minds have left us.” 

“We did you a favor, taking out the rest of the Hand’s leaders,” Colleen said. “Time for you to pay it back.” 

Gao laughed, and Colleen felt an urge to wrap her hands around the old woman’s neck and squeeze until the air to laugh had been squeezed from her lungs. “If you want to keep track of what is owed to whom,” she said, “you should know that I keep very long records.” She made a considering frown. “I suppose, though, that our paths may cross in the future to my benefit. Release Mr. MacCready, and we shall see about those coughs of yours.” 

“And our bodies,” Danny said determinedly. “You have to put us back in our own bodies.” 

“Like a dog with a bone, Mr. Rand. You never lose sight of what you want, even when you have lost the sight of the body. There is something admirable in that; it is a trait that many in the Hand share.” 

Matt rolled his eyes and threw his head back on his shoulders, as if rolling his eyes didn’t get across the right level of exasperation. “We’re not joining the Hand,” he said shortly. “We’ll let your man go, but we’re not here for a sales pitch.” 

“Of course not, Mr. Murdock,” said Gao graciously. “Please, come in. Ms. Wing?” 

Colleen reluctantly let go of MacCrae’s collar. Without his cane, he hovered uncertainly for a moment, before stepping forward to grasp at Madame Gao’s sleeve. She turned and led him into the building; the others cautiously followed. 

“Now,” said Gao. “If you will stand where you were when the four of you were last here and assume the correct positions, I will attempt to put you back into your proper forms.” 

“ _Attempt_?” asked Luke, and Gao shrugged. 

“The process is unperfected. And if you were not paying close enough attention to make sure that your spirits return to the correct bodies, that is hardly my fault.” 

_Shit._ “You guys,” Colleen said, “you’ve got to _think_. Danny was asking earlier—why did you end up in the bodies you ended up in?” 

“I don’t know!” Jessica threw her hands up helplessly, then put one to her head and groaned. “Ugh. I feel like my brain is going to explode.” 

Luke rubbed at his temples. “Okay. We said it earlier, when we were going through the timeline. I grabbed Danny.” 

“And I touched your arm,” Jessica said. 

“Wait," said Luke, clenching a fist and pumping it in excitement. "Wait. I have it. I grabbed your arm, Danny, and ended up in your body. Jessica touched me and ended up in mine.” 

“I was leaning on Jessica, and Danny brushed by me when he ran past,” Matt said, nodding. “That’s got to be it, Luke.” 

“Each of us ended up in the person we touched,” Luke concluded. “So to switch back, we touch whoever’s in our own bodies.” 

“You see?” Madame Gao said proudly. “You are not so foolish as you act, I think. And now, I think my part in this is done. I hope we have all learned from this, and that the next time we meet, it is under better circumstances.” And with that, she turned and started walking over to the basement door. 

“Hey, there, sister,” Claire said sharply. “Just where the hell do you think you’re going?” 

“You wanted me to return them to their proper forms, did you not?” Gao asked in tones of feigned surprise that set Colleen’s teeth on edge. “I’m certain you’ve already realized that the circuit breaker is in the basement, as are all the other supplies I will need to return their life forces where they belong.” 

Trish frowned, suspicious. “Well, one of us should go down there with you. Not that we don’t trust you, you understand, but we don’t trust you.” 

Gao fixed her with a patronizing smile. “A clever one. Surely one so clever as you must realize it isn’t just a matter of dust and electricity, Miss Walker. There are forces beyond your understanding that I have spent years studying and learning to…perhaps not _master_ , I don’t believe one ever truly masters such forces, but learning to work with them. No one who is uninitiated in our rites can witness them. Not simply for matters of privacy and purity, but they simply will not work in the presence of the unskilled.” 

“How do we know you’re not lying?” asked Colleen, unwilling to let Gao out of her sight but not wanting to fuck up their best chance of healing Danny, Luke, Jessica, and Matt. 

“Oh, I don’t lie, Miss Wing,” said Gao serenely. “I leave that to you and yours. And if you’ll take a word of advice? You may wish to leave the room. Unless you, too, would like to see the world through another’s eyes.” 

Colleen scanned the room, meeting everyone’s eyes, and everyone’s face said the same thing: _We have no choice._ She swallowed. “All right,” she said. “But you should know that if you harm them, or you don’t put them back the way they were before, I’m not just going to destroy this house. I’m going to devote the rest of my life to destroying _you_." 

Gao’s smile turned a little impish. “Bakuto always said you had a bit of spark to you. Petulance, he called it. He was never one to make the best use of his resources.” She turned back toward the door and, facing away from them all, said, “In exactly one minute the rite will be complete. Leave or stay as you will.” Still leaning on her stick, she made her way down the stairs and vanished from sight. 

Silence reigned for a moment. And then it hit Colleen—she had to leave Danny, leave all her friends, alone in this house with Gao. Everything in her rebelled against the idea. “Danny….” 

“We’ll be okay, Colleen,” said Danny earnestly. “But I don’t want anything to happen to you guys.” He tilted his head. “Gao’s doing…something down there. I don’t know what. You better get out of here.” 

“He’s right,” said Luke, and Claire nodded, visibly pulling herself together. 

She grabbed Colleen’s arm. “Come on,” she said, and half dragged her through the door before Colleen got her feet under her. Trish and Foggy followed soon after, looking almost petrified with nerves. But there wasn’t much time to let the fear sink in. What seemed like only a few seconds passed before the whole house lit up, a whirring sound coming from within. Colleen could see what her friends had meant by static, but she didn’t think that was it. It was more than that, it was a vibration in the ground, like a little earthquake. She shuddered and huddled closer against Claire. 

As quickly as it had started, however, the whole thing stopped, leaving the building dark and silent. Colleen blinked, her eyes dazed by the light. 

In the silence, Claire said, “They might not change right away. It took a few hours the first time.” That didn’t stop any of them, however, from staring at the door with hungry eyes. 

Jessica was the first to stumble through the door. Or maybe—“Claire,” said Jessica—Luke? 

“Luke?” Claire asked, stepping forward. 

“Yeah. Whew.” He shook his head, but not in denial, but like he was shaking something off his shoulders. “I feel—weird, but me. Definitely me.” 

“Oh, thank God,” said Claire, stepping forward to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his chest. 

Seconds later, Jessica appeared and made a beeline for Trish. The real Jessica, Colleen thought. There was no way Matt would just randomly hug her like that. 

Matt himself was the next on the threshold, stepping cautiously forward. 

“Matt?” Foggy asked tenuously. “Are you…you?” 

He paused to consider the question, and then a broad, genuinely happy grin spread across his face. “I think so, Fog,” he said. “And there _you_ are. It’s been way too long since I heard your heartbeat.” 

“It probably says something strange about my life that I genuinely find that touching,” said Foggy. “Now come here.” He reached out and pulled Matt into a hug. 

_Danny_ , thought Colleen. If everyone else had switched back so quickly, where was he? It couldn’t have worked for everyone else and not for him—could it? 

No. No, it couldn’t. 

His steps were slow as he appeared in the doorway, stepped out, and walked toward her. But as soon as Colleen met his eyes, she knew. 

He was back. And the world could start turning again. 

** 

It had taken a few days and a few tests for Claire to be sure that Luke and the rest of them were really cured of the—the soul-rejecting disease that had set in so terrifyingly. It made sense, as Luke said. Their spirits or life forces or whatever you wanted to call them belonged in their bodies, and once they were there, they could relax. It also explained why the switch back had happened so much more quickly than the original switch. It was a lot easier to go home than to fly to some foreign and unknown place. 

Gao was gone, vanished without a trace, as was Joe MacCready, but nobody stressed too much about it. It was…troubling, to say the least, that she was back, but they all needed a break, and to catch up on their regular lives. 

Claire and Luke didn’t leave the apartment for a few days after Claire was sure of his clean bill of health. Claire had had enough company to last her for a while, and she hadn’t slept well while Luke was in Danny’s body. She had a lot of sleep to catch up on. And a lot of other things. Closeness. Relaxation. Coffee. Both metaphorical and literal. 

On day four, though, Claire was starting to get a touch of cabin fever. So she went over to Colleen’s, between her first and second sets of morning classes, and wheedled a workout session out of her. 

“You’re in fine form this morning,” Colleen commented, grinning and somewhat shiny with sweat. 

Claire couldn’t help herself from grinning. “Feeling good,” she said. She and Luke had been getting reacquainted with his body, and having a lot of fun doing it. 

“Me, too,” said Colleen. Her smile shrunk a little, and Claire straightened from her lunge. 

“Yeah?” she asked, a little worry filtering into the general happiness her last few days had been. “Everything okay?” 

“Everything’s great,” said Colleen. 

Claire looked at her skeptically. She’d been a bit too defensive when she said that. “You sure?” 

“I’m sure,” she said. But then, after a moment, she slumped a little and added, “Actually, I think that might be the problem.” 

Claire determinedly did not groan. Dear God, did she need to find her friends a good therapist or ten. “Really?” she asked, trying to sound interestedly calm or calmly interested or however the hell a good listener sounded. 

“Yeah. It’s just—with Danny back, I feel so _solid_ and happy, and I keep thinking, ‘What if he’d died from that cough?’ ‘What if he’d stayed Matt forever?’ I was so—so scared and uncertain last week. And then I think, what kind of person am I that I can’t….” She looked at the ceiling and bit her lower lip. “I was part of the Hand for so long. And I was genuinely happy there. And then it was all gone, and I threw myself into Danny, and then fighting the Hand with him, and then fighting alongside the others, and...I don’t know, who would I be without this? Is there any real _me_ that isn’t just fighting for someone’s cause? And if there is, maybe it’s just, just violence and rage and—” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. This is so stupid. I should just be happy. And I _am_.” 

Claire shook her head and stepped closer. She wasn’t sure if Colleen would welcome being touched right now, so she didn’t, she just smiled at her and said, “It’s not stupid. And you know what? If Danny and the rest of them had died, or stayed in each other’s bodies, it would have _sucked_ , and it would have hurt us all really badly, but you still would have been you.” 

“Not the _same_ me, I think,” said Colleen, sounding tired in a way she hadn’t throughout their entire workout, and Claire shook her head. 

“Nobody goes through life without changing, Colleen. You think I thought this was the life I’d be living when I was a kid? Hell, no! But change doesn’t have to be bad. Sometimes what you want changes, or what you value, and sometimes life hits you, and you just…roll with the punches.” Claire rolled her shoulders, feeling the imaginary weight of everything life had hit her with. “I’m not the same person I used to be. But you know, most of the time I feel okay with that. And when I don’t, I just remind myself of what I got through to be where I am.” 

Colleen looked dubiously at her. “You always seem pretty confident.” 

“Hey,” said Claire, “when you’re fighting, or teaching, or anytime someone needs you to step up, you always seem pretty confident, too!” 

Colleen was pleased at that—she smiled, flushing slightly, and looked down. “Thanks. That means a lot, coming from you.” 

She seemed a lot less close to tears at this point, and Claire felt better about stepping closer and rubbing her arm comfortingly. “I don’t pretend to know what life was like for you before I met you,” she said. “But I know who you are, Colleen. And I like who you are. And all the good things about you? Your courage, and your loyalty, and the care you take with the people who mean something to you? Those things are _you_ as much as the bad stuff, and that’s not gonna change.” 

“Wow,” said Colleen, grinning at the floor. “You’re pretty good at these pep talks.” 

Claire shrugged. “Yeah, well. It’s a gift.” 

“Let’s see if you’re that good with the bo staff kata I taught you last month.” Colleen looked up and grinned. 

Sunlight was filtering through the window into the dojo, Claire was about to get her ass kicked at a move she hadn’t practiced in weeks, and Luke was meeting her for lunch in an hour. 

It was going to be a good day.


End file.
